Faith Has Its Reasons

1. Integrative Approaches to Defending the Christian Faith

Preface

How to relate the Christian worldview to a non-Christian world has been the dilemma of Christian spokespersons since the apostle Paul addressed the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers in Athens. Twenty centuries of experience have not simplified this task, as new challenges have arisen in every century and new methods and approaches to defending the Christian faith have been formulated in response.

In this introductory textbook on Christian apologetics—the study of the defense of the faith—you will be inducted into this two-millennia-long discussion. You will overhear the greatest apologists of all time responding to the intellectual attacks on the Bible in their day. You will take a guided tour of the four major approaches to apologetics that have emerged in the past couple of centuries. Along the way you will pick up insightful answers to such questions as:

Why is belief in God rational despite the prevalence of evil in the world?

What facts support the church’s testimony that Jesus rose from the dead?

Can we be certain Christianity is true?

How can our faith in Christ be based on something more secure than our own understanding without descending into an irrational emotionalism?

At least formal differences in theory and method have sharply distinguished leading Christian apologists. At the same time, many apologists draw on a variety of methods and do not fit neatly into a single ‘cookie-cutter’ theory of how to defend the Christian faith. In this book, we will identify four ‘approaches’ or idealized types of Christian apologetic methodologies. We will look at the actual apologetic arguments of leading apologists and see how their methods compare to those idealized approaches. We will then consider the work of apologists who have advocated directly integrating two or more of these four basic approaches. Our goal is to contribute toward an understanding of these different apologetic methods that will enrich all Christians in their defense of the faith and enable them to speak with clearer and more relevant voices to our present day and beyond.

Sarah and Murali

While apologetics as an intellectual discipline seeks to develop answers to questions that at times may seem abstract, ultimately its purpose is to facilitate bringing real people into a relationship with the living and true God. In this book we will illustrate how the various apologetic methods would be applied in conversations with two very different hypothetical individuals: Sarah and Murali.

Sarah is a college sophomore pursuing a degree in psychology at a state university. Raised in a conservative Protestant home, she began to question the faith of her childhood in high school, as Christianity increasingly seemed a harsh and uncaring religion to her. In her first year at the university she took introductory courses in philosophy, psychology, and English literature that cast doubt on Christian beliefs and values. Her philosophy professor especially had gone out of his way to ridicule “fundamentalism” and had attacked the Christian worldview at its root. Sarah found the “problem of evil”—the question of why a good, all-powerful God would allow so much evil in his world—to be an especially strong argument against Christianity. She was also exposed to theories of biblical criticism that denied the historical accuracy of the Bible and reinterpreted the biblical miracles as myths. When she went home for the summer after her first year at State, Sarah was a self-confessed skeptic.

Murali came to the United States from India to attend medical school and ended up staying and establishing a practice there. Although he was raised as a Hindu and still respects his family’s religion, Murali is not particularly devout. Troubled by the centuries of conflict in the Indian subcontinent between Hindus and Muslims, he has concluded that all religions are basically good and none should be regarded as superior to another. Absolute claims in religion strike him as both unprovable and intolerant, and he resents efforts by both Muslims and Christians to convert him or his family to their beliefs. Although religions speak about God and adherents experience the transcendent in different ways, he believes it is all really the same thing. When Muslims or Christians attempt to convince him that their religion is the truth, Murali asks why God has allowed so many different religions to flourish if only one of them is acceptable to God.

Throughout this book we will periodically ask how a skilled and astute advocate of a particular approach to apologetics would respond to Sarah and Murali. In this way we will see how the various apologetic methods can be applied in concrete situations. We will see their weaknesses as well as their strengths. This will help us think through how the different apologetic methods may be integrated to greater effectiveness in defending the faith.

Fundamental to apologetics is answering questions commonly raised by non-Christians about the truth of Christianity. While many such questions are broached in this book, we will concentrate on those that are basic and crucial to the validity of the Christian faith. These questions are part of the unbelieving stance typified by our model non-Christians, Sarah and Murali. Those questions are the following:

1. Why should we believe in the Bible?

2. Don’t all religions lead to God?

3. How do we know that God exists?

4. If God does exist, why does he permit evil?

5. Aren’t the miracles of the Bible spiritual myths or legends and not literal fact?

6. Why should I believe what Christians claim about Jesus?

Tom, Joe, Cal, and Martina

In this book we will be analyzing four basic approaches to apologetics. Again, these are idealized types; when we consider the apologetic work of actual Christian apologists we find that there are actually many more than four approaches. However, most of the methods that Christians use in apologetics are closely related to one of these four basic approaches. We might think of them as ‘families’ of apologetic approaches, with those classified in the same type as sharing certain ‘family resemblances’ with one another. Membership in one family does not preclude some resemblances to another family. Our analysis of apologetic approaches into these four types closely parallels that found in other surveys of major types of apologetics, though with some minor differences (see the Appendix.)

What distinguishes these four basic approaches to apologetics? To put the matter as simply as possible, each places a distinctive priority on reason, fact, revelation, and faith respectively. In our illustrations with Sarah and Murali, we will also present four Christians utilizing the four approaches in an astute, representative manner. For reasons that will become clear by the end of Part One, we call these four apologists Tom (after Thomas Aquinas, a thirteenth-century theologian), Joe (after Joseph Butler, an eighteenth-century Anglican bishop), Cal (after John Calvin, the sixteenth-century French Reformer), and Martina (after Martin Luther, the sixteenth-century German Reformer). Tom’s apologetic approach places a strong emphasis on logic, and is called classical apologetics. Joe’s approach emphasizes facts or evidences, and is called evidentialism. Cal’s approach emphasizes the authority of God’s revelation in Scripture; because of its close identification with Calvinist or Reformed theology, this approach is here called Reformed apologetics. Finally, Martina’s approach emphasizes the need for personal faith and is referred to here as fideism (from the Latin fide, “faith”). These are differences in emphasis or priority, since apologists favoring one approach over another generally allow some role for reason, facts, revelation, and faith. (Even fideism, which is typically suspicious of apologetic argument, offers a kind of apologetics that uses reason and fact.)

The four approaches diverge on apologetic method or theory regarding the following six questions, all of which will be discussed in this book in relation to each of the four views:

1. 1. On what basis do we claim that Christianity is the truth?

2. 2. What is the relationship between apologetics and theology?

3. 3. Should apologetics engage in a philosophical defense of the Christian faith?

4. 4. Can science be used to defend the Christian faith?

5. 5. Can the Christian faith be supported by historical inquiry?

6. 6. How is our knowledge of Christian truth related to our experience?

Although each approach answers these questions in different ways, those answers are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In practice, many apologists do not fit neatly into one of the four categories because they draw somewhat from two or even more approaches to answer these questions about apologetics. We see this as a healthy tendency. In fact, we will argue that all four approaches have value and should be integrated together as much as possible.

The Plan of the Book

This book is divided into six parts. Part One introduces the subject of apologetics, and includes a review of the thought of leading apologists in church history and an overview of the four basic approaches to apologetics.

Parts Two through Five present parallel treatments of each of the four approaches. Each part is divided into four chapters. The first chapter of each part traces the roots of the apologetic approach and introduces the thought of five major apologists (chapters 4, 8, 12, and 16). These five apologists are associated with that approach or idealized type in different ways: some are precursors to that approach as it has emerged in modern times, some are advocates of a “pure” form of that approach, and some represent significant variations in that approach. The second chapter analyzes the method and its view of the six questions mentioned above concerning knowledge, theology, philosophy, science, history, and experience (5, 9, 13, and 17). The third chapter examines the method’s answers to the six questions about Scripture, other religions, God, evil, miracles, and Jesus (6, 10, 14, and 18). The fourth chapter of each part summarizes the method and illustrates it with a sample dialogue between our two fictional non-Christians and one of the four model Christian apologists (7, 11, 15, and 19). Each of these latter chapters also discusses the major strengths and weaknesses of the apologetic approach illustrated in the dialogue.

Finally, Part Six discusses ways to integrate the four basic approaches. Its structure closely parallels Parts Two through Five, and thus it begins with a chapter noting the precursors to an integrative strategy and introducing the thought of five modern apologists who have proposed or utilized such integrative systems (chapter 20). These five apologists integrate the four approaches in different ways, with one approach typically dominating to some extent. The next two chapters propose integrative strategies to understanding the relation of apologetics to theories of knowledge, theology, philosophy, science, history, and experience (21), and to answering the six questions concerning Scripture, other religions, God, evil, miracles, and Jesus (22). We are not here advocating a ‘fifth approach’ or offering an integrative system of our own to replace or supplant other apologetic systems. Rather, we are encouraging Christians to use whatever method or methods they find useful while enriching their defense of the faith by learning from apologists who favor other approaches. The final chapter makes the case for a plurality of apologetic methods in view of the differences among apologists and non-Christians, the different needs people have, and the different questions people ask (23). The following table shows the overall plan of the book from Part Two through Part Six.

This second edition of Faith Has Its Reasons has been thoroughly updated and in other respects revised. Wherever possible we have drawn on more recent publications of living apologists and made note of recent studies pertaining to apologists and apologetic issues. A number of reviewers of the first edition made some insightful criticisms that we have taken into consideration in this revision. It may be impossible, even in a book of this length, to treat such a vast array of thinkers and diversity of issues without simplifying and even omitting some significant aspects of the subject matter. We encourage you to use this book as an introduction to the field of apologetics—a handbook to your reading of the groundbreaking apologists of the past and the present.

We pray that this book will be useful in helping you to “sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence” (1 Peter 3:15).

2. What is Apologetics?

Defining Apologetics

Apologetics may be simply defined as the defense of the Christian faith. The simplicity of this definition, however, masks the complexity of the problem of defining apologetics. It turns out that a diversity of approaches has been taken to defining the meaning, scope, and purpose of apologetics.

From Apologia to Apologetics

The word “apologetics” derives from the Greek word apologia, which was originally used of a speech of defense or an answer given in reply. In ancient Athens it referred to a defense made in the courtroom as part of the normal judicial procedure. After the accusation, the defendant was allowed to refute the charges with a defense or reply (apologia). The accused would attempt to “speak away” (apo—away, logia—speech) the accusation.1 The classic example of such an apologia was Socrates’ defense against the charge of preaching strange gods, a defense retold by his most famous pupil, Plato, in a dialogue called The Apology (in Greek, hē apologia).

The word appears 17 times in noun or verb form in the New Testament, and both the noun (apologia) and verb form (apologeomai) can be translated “defense” or “vindication” in every case.2 Usually the word is used to refer to a speech made in one’s own defense. For example, in one passage Luke says that a Jew named Alexander tried to “make a defense” before an angry crowd in Ephesus that was incited by idol-makers whose business was threatened by Paul’s preaching (Acts 19:33). Elsewhere Luke always uses the word in reference to situations in which Christians, and in particular the apostle Paul, are put on trial for proclaiming their faith in Christ and have to defend their message against the charge of being unlawful (Luke 12:11; 21:14; Acts 22:1; 24:10; 25:8, 16; 26:2, 24).

Paul himself used the word in a variety of contexts in his epistles. To the Corinthians, he found it necessary to “defend” himself against criticisms of his claim to be an apostle (1 Cor. 9:3; 2 Cor. 12:19). At one point he describes the repentance exhibited by the Corinthians as a “vindication” (2 Cor. 7:11 nasb), that is, as an “eagerness to clear yourselves” (niv, nrsv). To the Romans, Paul described Gentiles who did not have the written Law as being aware enough of God’s Law that, depending on their behavior, their own thoughts will either prosecute or “defend” them on Judgment Day (Rom. 2:15). Toward the end of his life, Paul told Timothy, “At my first defense no one supported me” (2 Tim. 4:16), referring to the first time he stood trial. Paul’s usage here is similar to what we find in Luke’s writings. Earlier, he had expressed appreciation to the Philippians for supporting him “both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel” (Phil. 1:7). Here again the context is Paul’s conflict with the government and his imprisonment. However, the focus of the “defense” is not Paul but “the gospel”: Paul’s ministry includes defending the gospel against its detractors, especially those who claim that it is subversive or in any way unlawful. So Paul says later in the same chapter, “I am appointed for the defense of the gospel” (Phil. 1:16).

Finally, in 1 Peter 3:15 believers are told always to be prepared “to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you.” The context here is similar to Paul’s later epistles and to Luke’s writings: non-Christians are slandering the behavior of Christians and threatening them with persecution (1 Pet. 3:13-17; 4:12-19). When challenged or even threatened, Christians are to behave lawfully, maintain a good conscience, and give a reasoned defense of what they believe to anyone who asks. (We will discuss this text further in chapter 2.)

The New Testament, then, does not use the words apologia and apologeomai in the technical sense of the modern word apologetics. The idea of offering a reasoned defense of the faith is evident in three of these texts (Philippians 1:7, 16; and especially 1 Peter 3:15), but even here no science or formal academic discipline of apologetics is contemplated. Indeed, no specific system or theory of apologetics is outlined in the New Testament.

In the second century this general word for “defense” began taking on a narrower sense to refer to a group of writers who defended the beliefs and practices of Christianity against various attacks. These men were known as the apologists because of the titles of some of their treatises, and included most notably Justin Martyr (First Apology, Dialogue with Trypho, Second Apology) and Tertullian (Apologeticum). The use of the title Apology by these authors harks back to Plato’s Apology and to the word’s usual sense in the New Testament, and is consistent with the fact that the emphasis of these second-century apologies was on defending Christians against charges of illegal activities.

It was apparently not until 1794 that apologetics was used to designate a specific theological discipline,3 and there has been debate about the place of this discipline in Christian thought almost from that time forward. In 1908 B. B. Warfield cataloged some of these alternate perceptions before offering his own conclusion that apologetics should be given the broad task of authenticating the facts of God (philosophical apologetics), religious consciousness (psychological apologetics), revelation (revelational apologetics), Christianity (historical apologetics), and the Bible (bibliological apologetics, Warfield’s specialty).4 Greg L. Bahnsen summarizes Warfield’s catalog:

Some attempted to distinguish apologetics from apology, but they differed among themselves respecting the principle of distinction (Dusterdieck, Kubel). Apologetics was variously classified as an exegetical discipline (Planck), historical theology (Tzschirner), theory of religion (Rabiger), philosophical theology (Schleiermacher), something distinct from polemics (Kuyper), something belonging to several departments (Tholuck, Cave), or something which had no right to exist (Nosselt). H. B. Smith viewed apologetics as historico-philosophical dogmatics which deals with detail questions, but Kubel claimed that it properly deals only with the essence of Christianity. Schultz went further and said that apologetics is concerned simply to defend a generally religious view of the world, but others taught that apologetics should aim to establish Christianity as the final religion (Sack, Ebrard, Lechler, Lemme).5

This debate has continued throughout the twentieth century. In this chapter we will offer definitions of the apologetics word group and consider just how best to conceive of the discipline of apologetics.

Apologetics and Related Terms

It has become customary to use the term apology to refer to a specific effort or work in defense of the faith.6 An apology might be a written document, a speech, or even a film; any medium of communication might conceivably be used.

An apologist is someone who presents an apology or makes a practice of defending the faith. Apologists might (and do) develop their apologies within various intellectual contexts. That is, they may offer defenses of the Christian faith in relation to scientific, historical, philosophical, ethical, religious, theological, or cultural issues.

The terms apologetic and apologetics are closely related, and can be used synonymously. Here, for clarity’s sake, we will suggest one way of usefully distinguishing these terms that corresponds to the way they are often actually used. An apologetic (using the word as a noun) will be here defined as a particular approach to the defense of the faith. Thus, one may hear about Francis Schaeffer’s apologetic or about the Thomistic apologetic. Of course, we often use apologetic as an adjective, as when we speak about apologetic issues or William Paley’s apologetic thought.

Apologetics, on the other hand, has been used in at least three ways. Perhaps most commonly it refers to the discipline concerned with the defense of the faith. Second, it can refer to a general grouping of approaches or systems developed for defending the faith, as when we speak about evidentialist apologetics or Reformed apologetics. Third, it is sometimes used to refer to the practice of defending the faith—as the activity of presenting an apology or apologies in defense of the faith. These three usages are easily distinguished by context, so we will employ all three in this book.

Finally, metapologetics refers to the study of the nature and methods of apologetics. This term has come into usage only recently and is still rarely used.7 Mark Hanna defined it as “the field of inquiry that examines the methods, concepts, and foundations of apologetic systems and perspectives.”8 While apologetics studies the defense of the faith, metapologetics studies the theoretical issues underlying the defense of the faith. It is evident, then, that metapologetics is a branch of apologetics; it focuses on the principial, fundamental questions that must be answered properly if the practice of apologetics is to be securely grounded in truth. A metapologetic may then be defined as a particular theory of metapologetics, such as Cornelius Van Til’s Reformed metapologetic or Norman Geisler’s neo-Thomistic metapologetic.

The Functions of Apologetics

Historically, apologetics has been understood to involve at least three functions or goals. Some apologists have emphasized only one function while others have denied that one or more of these are valid functions of apologetics, but in general they have been widely recognized as defining the task of apologetics. Francis Beattie, for example, delineated them as a defense of Christianity as a system, a vindication of the Christian worldview against its assailants, and a refutation of opposing systems and theories.9

Bernard Ramm also lists three functions of apologetics. The first is “to show how the Christian faith is related to truth claims.” The truth claims of a religion must be examined so that its relation to reality can be discerned and tested. This function corresponds to what Beattie calls defense. The second function is “to show Christianity’s power of interpretation” relative to a variety of subjects—which is essentially the same as what Beattie calls vindication. Ramm’s third function, the refutation of false or spurious attacks, is identical to Beattie’s.10

The first three parts of Robert Reymond’s fourfold analysis of the task of Christian apologetics follow the same pattern. (1) Apologetics answers particular objections—obstacles like alleged contradictions between scriptural statements and misconceptions about Christianity need to be removed (defense). (2) It gives an account of the foundations of the Christian faith by delving into philosophical theology, and especially epistemology (vindication). (3) It challenges non-Christian systems, particularly in the area of epistemological justification (refutation). To these Reymond adds a fourth point: (4) Apologetics seeks to persuade people of the truth of the Christian position.12 In a sense, this last point could be viewed simply as indicating the overall purpose of apologetics, with the first three points addressing the specific functions by which that purpose is accomplished. On the other hand, treating persuasion as a separate function is helpful, since it involves elements that go beyond offering an intellectual response (the focus of the first three points). Persuasion must also consider the life experience of the unbeliever, the proper tone to take with a person, and other matters beyond simply imparting information.

We may distinguish, then, four functions, goals, modes, or aspects of apologetics. The first may be called vindication (Beattie) or proof (Frame) and involves marshaling philosophical arguments as well as scientific and historical evidences for the Christian faith. The goal of apologetics here is to develop a positive case for Christianity as a belief system that should be accepted. Philosophically, this means drawing out the logical implications of the Christian worldview so that they can be clearly seen and contrasted with alternate worldviews. Such a contrast necessarily raises the issue of criteria of verification if these competing truth claims are to be assessed. The question of the criteria by which Christianity is proved is a fundamental point of contention among proponents of the various kinds of Christian apologetic systems.

The second function is defense. This function is closest to the New Testament and early Christian use of the word apologia: defending Christianity against the plethora of attacks made against it in every generation by critics of varying belief systems. This function involves clarifying the Christian position in light of misunderstandings and misrepresentations; answering objections, criticisms, or questions from non-Christians; and in general clearing away any intellectual difficulties that nonbelievers claim stand in the way of their coming to faith. More generally, the purpose of apologetics as defense is not so much to show that Christianity is true as to show that it is credible.

The third function is refutation of opposing beliefs (what Frame calls “offense”). This function focuses on answering, not specific objections to Christianity, but the arguments non-Christians give in support of their own beliefs. Most apologists agree that refutation cannot stand alone, since proving a non-Christian religion or philosophy to be false does not prove that Christianity is true. Nevertheless, it is an essential function of apologetics.

The fourth function is persuasion. By this we do not mean merely convincing people that Christianity is true, but persuading them to apply its truth to their life. This function focuses on bringing non-Christians to the point of commitment. The apologist’s intent is not merely to win an intellectual argument, but to persuade people to commit their lives and eternal futures into the trust of the Son of God who died for them. We might also speak of this function as evangelism or witness.

These four aspects or functions of apologetics have differing and complementary goals or intentions with respect to reason. Apologetics as proof shows that Christianity is reasonable; its purpose is to give the non-Christian good reasons to embrace the Christian faith. Apologetics as defense shows that Christianity is not unreasonable; its purpose is to show that the non-Christian will not be acting irrationally by trusting in Christ or by accepting the Bible as God’s word. Third, apologetics as refutation shows that non-Christian thought is unreasonable. The purpose of refuting non-Christian belief systems is to confront non-Christians with the irrationality of their position. And fourth, apologetics as persuasion takes into consideration the fact that Christianity is not known by reason alone. The apologist seeks to persuade non-Christians to trust Christ, not merely to accept truth claims about Christ, and this purpose necessitates realizing the personal dimension in apologetic encounters and in every conversion to faith in Christ.

Not everyone agrees that apologetics involves all four of these functions. For example, some apologists and theologians have claimed that proof is not a valid function of apologetics—that we should be content to show that Christianity is not unreasonable. Or again, some Christian philosophers have urged against trying to argue that the non-Christian is being irrational to reject Christianity. Many apologists have even abandoned the idea that apologetics might be useful to persuade people to believe in Christ. Such opinions notwithstanding, all four functions have historically been important in apologetics, and each has been championed by great Christian apologists throughout church history.13 It is to the efforts of those apologists, then, that we turn in the next chapter.

For Further Study

Howe, Frederic R. Challenge and Response: A Handbook for Christian Apologetics. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982. The first two chapters discuss the definition of apologetics (13-24) and the relationship between evangelism and apologetics (25-33), with Howe arguing for a sharp distinction between the two.

Mayers, Ronald B. “What Is Apologetics?” Chapter 1 in Balanced Apologetics: Using Evidences and Presuppositions in Defense of the Faith, 1-14. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1996. First published as Both/And: A Balanced Apologetic. Chicago: Moody, 1984. Helpful treatment of the meaning of apologia and of the relationship between apologetics and philosophy.

Warfield, Benjamin B. “Apologetics.” In The New Schaff-Hertzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, ed. Samuel Macauley Jackson, 1:232-238. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1908. Reprinted in Studies in Theology, 3-21. The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield 9. New York: Oxford University Press, 1932; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981. Still hard-to-match analysis of the nature of apologetics and its place in the academic disciplines.

2Unless otherwise indicated, all biblical quotations are from the “Updated Edition” of the New American Standard Bible, or nasb (La Habra, Calif.: Lockman Foundation, 1995; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999). Other translations cited include the New International Version (niv) and the New Revised Standard Version (nrsv).

7The first occurrence of the term known to us is in John Warwick Montgomery, Faith Founded on Fact: Essays in Evidential Apologetics (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1978), xiii (which uses the form “meta-apologetics”).

13In the first edition of this book, we had correlated these four functions of proof, defense, refutation, and persuasion with the four basic approaches of classical, evidential, Reformed, and fideistic apologetics. Although some rough correlations can be made (e.g., refutation is primary in the presuppositionalist wing of Reformed apologetics; persuasion clearly is primary in fideism), they do not hold up consistently.

3. A Brief History of Apologetics

While apologies or defenses of the Christian faith go all the way back to the first century, the formal science of apologetics is a more recent development. In this chapter we will survey the history of apologetics in three stages. First, we will discuss in some detail apologetics in the New Testament itself. Second, we will give detailed attention to the thought of the leading apologists prior to the Reformation, notably Augustine, Anselm, and Thomas Aquinas. Third, we will present a more cursory overview of apologetics from the Reformation to the present.1 In later chapters we will consider the apologetic thought of several modern Christian thinkers in more detail.

Apologetics in the New Testament

Although perhaps none of the New Testament writings should be classified as a formal apologetic treatise, most of them exhibit apologetic concerns.2 The New Testament writers anticipate and answer objections and seek to demonstrate the credibility of the claims and credentials of Christ, focusing especially on the resurrection of Jesus as the historical foundation upon which Christianity is built. Many New Testament writings are occupied with polemics against false teachings, in which the apologetic concern is to defend the gospel against perversion from within the church.3

Apologetics in Luke-Acts

Of all the New Testament writings, the two volumes by Luke (his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles) are the most overtly apologetical in purpose.4 In his prologue (Luke 1:1-4) Luke announces that his work is based on careful historical research and will present an accurate record of the origins of Christianity. The very structure and content of this two-part work suggests it was written at least in part as a political apology for Paul: Acts ends with Paul under house arrest yet preaching freely in Rome, and both books emphasize that Jesus and the apostles (especially Paul) were law-abiding persons. In Acts the motif of Jesus’ resurrection as vindication, his fulfillment of Old Testament messianic prophecies, and the charismatic phenomena on and after the Day of Pentecost are used as cumulative evidences of the messianic lordship of Jesus (Acts 2:36) and of the authority of the apostolic truth claims. Along the way Luke uses the speeches of the apostles to present apologetic arguments to a wide variety of audiences, both Jewish and Gentile.

One of these speeches, Paul’s address to the Athenians in Acts 17, has been extraordinarily important in Christian reflections about apologetics throughout church history; it is the only substantial example of an apology directed to a non-Jewish audience in the New Testament (though see Acts 14:15-17). Thus this one speech has traditionally been regarded as a paradigm or model of apologetics.5

According to Luke (Acts 17:18), Paul’s message of Jesus and the Resurrection was misunderstood as teaching new deities. Luke reports this accusation in terms identical to those describing the Athenians’ charge against Socrates in Plato’s Apology, which strongly suggests that Luke sees Paul’s speech here as a Christian counterpart to the Socratic apology. Challenged to explain his position by Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, Paul set his message in a rational context in which it would make sense to his philosophically minded audience. The speech was quite unlike those Paul delivered to Jewish audiences, which emphasized Jesus as the fulfillment of Old Testament messianic promises and quoted Old Testament proof texts liberally. In fact, Paul used a form of speech recognized by the Greeks as a philosophical address, such as was commonly used by the Stoics and Cynics of his day.

Throughout the speech Paul speaks biblical truth but uses Stoic terms and argues in Stoic fashion, even quoting a Stoic poet in support of his argument (verses 24-29). Essentially, the point of this first and longest part of the speech is that idolatry is foolish and that the Stoics themselves have admitted as much, though they had failed to abandon it completely. Paul uses this inconsistency in Stoic philosophy to illustrate the Athenians’ ignorance of God (cf. verse 23). Having proved his major premise, Paul then announces that God has declared an end to ignorance of his nature and will by revealing himself. Paul concludes that the Resurrection is proof of God’s intention to judge the world through Jesus Christ (verses 30-31). This scandalized the Athenians (verse 32), in part because Greek thought generally found the idea of physical resurrection foolish, and in part because the idea of a final judgment was offensive to them.

The result of Paul’s apology was that some believed, some scoffed, and some expressed interest (verses 32-34). These reactions cover the three possible responses to the gospel, and the small numberof those who believed should not be taken to mean that Paul’s speech was a failure. Nor should 1 Corinthians 2:2 be taken to mean that Paul abandoned philosophical reasoning (as his use of Greek logic and rhetoric in 1 Corinthians 15 makes clear), but that he refused to avoid the central issue with the Corinthians even though it was scandalous to them. Thus Christian apologists are right to view Paul’s speech to the Athenians as a model of Christian apology.

Apologetics in Paul’s Writings

Closely related to Paul’s thought in his Athenian address is his argument in Romans 1. Paul takes over Hellenistic Jewish apologetics here on the folly of Gentile culture (chapter 1, first half of chapter 2), then argues that the Jews are not above the same sins as the Gentiles (second half of chapter 2). Along the way he sets forth some notions about the knowledge of God that have been extremely important for apologetics.6 According to Paul, God’s existence and divinity are clearly revealed in nature. All human beings, he says, “knew God,” but they suppressed the truth, refusing to acknowledge God and falling into idolatry instead (1:18-25).

The statement that people “knew God” (verse 21) has been understood in two ways. (1) It may mean that all people once knew God but don’t any longer. The past tense of the verb certainly allows for this interpretation, and in support it may be noted that Paul elsewhere consistently says that the Gentiles do not know God (besides Acts 17:23, see 1 Corinthians 1:21; Galatians 4:8; 1 Thessalonians 4:5; 2 Thessalonians 1:8; Titus 1:16). (2) It may mean that all people in some limited sense know God but refuse to worship him properly. In support of this view, it has been pointed out that the godless must know something about God to be able to “suppress” the truth about him and refuse to “acknowledge” him (Romans 1:18, 28). In other words, since the suppression continues, so must the knowledge being suppressed.7 These two views can be reconciled. The true knowledge of God—in which one knows God, not merely knows that there is a God of some kind—was once had by all people, but no longer. All human beings continue to know that there is a God and continue to be confronted with internal and external evidence for his deity, but generally speaking they suppress or subvert this knowledge into idolatrous religion of varying kinds.

Paul’s letters elsewhere repeatedly deal with apologetic issues that arose as both Jews and pagans who had confessed Christ and become associated with the churches Paul had founded developed radically different interpretations of the meaning of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 1–2 Paul warned the Corinthian believers against trying to accommodate the gospel to the wisdom of the Greeks. Paul is not advocating a kind of anti-intellectualism. Christianity promotes a true wisdom that mature Christians find intellectually superior to anything the world can produce, one based on God’s revelation rather than human speculation (1 Corinthians 1:18-21; 2:6-16).8 In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul refuted errors about the resurrection of the dead by reminding the Corinthians that the resurrection of Christ was a historical fact (verses 3-11). Paul argues that the heretics—who deny our future resurrection—are inconsistent if they affirm Jesus’ resurrection since, if he was raised, we can be too. They are also inconsistent if they do not affirm Jesus’ resurrection since, if Jesus was not raised, there is no point to their affirming faith in Jesus at all (verses 12-19). This is a classic model of apologetic argument, locking opponents of gospel truths in a logical dilemma.9

In his epistle to the Colossians, Paul refuted errors about Christ’s person that arose apparently from a religious context in which unbiblical Jewish and Greek ideas were mixed with an acknowledgment, however inadequate, of Jesus Christ. In this context Paul condemns not philosophy per se, but manmade philosophies that are not “according to Christ” (Colossians 2:8). Paul boldly co-opted Greek religious terms such as plērōma, a term used to denote the “fullness” of the divine beings that inhabited the cosmos, to convey Christian ideas—in this case, the idea that all deity dwelled in Christ (2:9).

Apologetics in John’s Writings

The apostle John followed a strategy similar to Paul’s adoption of Greek philosophical and religious terms in his Gospel, in which the preincarnate Christ is called the Logos (“Word,” John 1:1, 14; cf. 1 John 1:1). The notion of a preexistent Word involved in God’s creation of the universe had Old Testament associations (for example, Genesis 1:3, etc.; Psalm 33:6, 9). Still, to any Gentile or Hellenistic Jewish reader the term Logos would have immediately conjured up Platonic and Stoic notions of the universal Reason that was believed to govern the cosmos and was thought to be reflected in the rational mind of every human being (cf. John 1:9). Yet the announcement by John that this Logos was personal—that he was God’s Son (verses 1, 14, 18; cf. 20:31) and had become incarnate (1:14)—was shocking to both Jews and Greeks. It required a completely new way of looking at God and humanity to believe that Jesus was the divine Logos incarnate.10

The Apologetic Mandate in 1 Peter 3:15

Our survey of New Testament apologetics would not be complete without taking notice of 1 Peter 3:15, which has often been regarded as the classic biblical statement of the mandate for Christians to engage in apologetics.11 Peter instructs believers to “sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense [apologia] to every one who asks you to give an account [logos] for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.” Three key observations should be made about this text.

First, Peter is definitely instructing believers to make a reasoned defense of their beliefs. Logos (the same word used in John 1:1 to refer to the preexistent Christ) is a very flexible word, but in this context it clearly refers to a rational explanation or account. The word apologia, while not meaning “apologetics” in the modern technical sense, does indicate that Christians are to make the best case they can for their confession of Jesus Christ as Lord.

Second, this apologetic mandate is given generally to all Christians, requiring them to give reasons for faith in Christ to anyone who asks for them. In the context Peter is specifically urging believers to be ready to do this when threatened with suffering for their faith (see 1 Peter 3:13-14, 16-17), but there is no basis for limiting the mandate to such situations. The language is quite general (“always . . . to every one who asks you”) and makes the apologetic mandate a standing order for the church.

Third, Peter instructs us to engage in apologetics with proper attitudes toward both the non-Christians with whom we are speaking and the Lord about whom we are speaking: “with gentleness and reverence.” The term “gentleness” indicates the manner in which we are to answer those who challenge our faith (again, in context this includes both “seekers” and those who are antagonistic to the Christian message). The term “reverence” (phobos, almost always translated “fear”) is translated “respect” in some versions, and this is often understood as referring to respect toward the people to whom we are speaking. However, Peter has just said we are not to show phobos toward people (3:14), and elsewhere says we are to show phobos toward God (1:17; 2:17). Almost certainly, then, Peter is telling us to conduct our defense of the faith with an attitude of holy fear or reverence toward Christ, whom we honor as Lord (3:15). We do so by striving to be faithful to Christ both in what we say and in how we live (verse 16).

The Early Church Fathers

In the postapostolic era, the new challenges that confronted the burgeoning church as it spread throughout the Roman Empire required a new apologetic counterthrust. Rabbinic Judaism, fully developed Gnosticism, persecuting paganism, and Hellenistic culture and philosophy all opposed the fledgling church. The religious apologists defended Christianity against these attacks and sought to gain converts to the faith by arguing for the superiority of the Christian position. There were also political apologists who argued that the church should be tolerated by the state.

The apologists of the second century12 modeled their arguments after contemporary philosophical refutations of polytheism and the critiques of pagan philosophy by Hellenistic Jews. Of the many apologists from this period, the most important by far was Justin Martyr (ca. 100-165),13 a convert to Christianity from Platonism. In his DialoguewithTryphotheJew, Justin used messianic prophecies from the Hebrew Scriptures to prove that Jesus is the Messiah. In his two Apologies he appealed for the civil toleration of Christianity and argued that it was in fact the true philosophy. To show that Christianity should be tolerated, he refuted common errors and rumors (for example, that Christians were atheists and that they ate flesh and drank blood) and presented Christianity as a morally superior religion. To support his claim that it was the true philosophy, Justin made the first attempt in postbiblical history to correlate John’s doctrine of the Logos with Greek philosophy, arguing that Christianity was superior to Platonism and that any truth in Plato was actually plagiarized from Moses. Arguably, Justin’s doctrine was less than consistently biblical, notably in his strongly subordinationist view of Christ. However, his efforts were commendable given his place in Christian history (even before the process of collecting the New Testament canon was completed) and in view of his role as a pioneer in Christian theologizing and apologetics.

The third-century Alexandrians “continued to assimilate arguments from Platonic and Stoic philosophers as well as Jewish controversialists.”14 Clement of Alexandria wrote a number of theological discourses and an apologetic work called Protrepticus, a more sophisticated and persuasive work than those of the second-century apologists. By far the most important Greek apologist of the third century was Origen (ca. 185-254),15 whose lengthy ContraCelsum (“Against Celsus”) was a reply to Celsus’s philosophical, ethical, and historical criticisms of Christianity. In it, for example, Origen argued that Jesus did not do his miracles by sorcery, offered an impressive historical defense of Jesus’ resurrection against an early hallucination theory and other objections, and showed that the miracle stories of paganism are far less credible than those of the Gospels.16 It is with good reason that Origen’s book has been ranked as one of the classics of apologetics.17

Augustine

In the fourth and fifth centuries, pagan religions were on the wane and Christianity was on the ascendancy throughout the empire, particularly after the edict of Constantine in 313. Christian apologists, both Latin and Greek, wrote with pride of the progress and life-changing effects of Christianity. They also became more systematic in their presentation of Christianity as a worldview in contrast to competing philosophies, notably Neoplatonism.

The greatest apologist and theologian of this period and indeed of the first millennium of Christian history was, by nearly everyone’s reckoning, Aurelius Augustine (354-430), the bishop of Hippo, whose apologetic and theological writings ranged widely over the areas of human culture, philosophy, and history.18 Augustine was won to the Christian faith after trying Manicheism, a dualistic philosophy that viewed both good and evil as ultimate realities, and Platonism, which convinced him that Manicheism was false and so, by his own testimony, helped him on the path to Christianity. His earlier apologetic works, not surprisingly, were in large part devoted to refuting Manichean philosophy (OntheCatholicandManicheanWaysof Life, OfTrue Religion, OntheUsefulnessof Belief).

As Augustine became more involved in church life, his apologetic works became more diversified. Over the course of his life he wrote numerous works championing Christianity over paganism, refuting heresies plaguing the church, and expounding Christian truth in a positive manner in teaching manuals and in sermons for the edification of Christians. An original and multigifted writer, thinker, and scholar, Augustine was able to develop an apologetic that was built on a stronger metaphysical or worldview base. While his worldview was at first heavily Platonic, as he matured his theology and philosophy became significantly less Platonic and more and more biblical. Specifically, Augustine became the first Christian theologian and apologist to embrace a thoroughly Pauline view of faith and of God’s sovereignty in salvation and in human history. This Pauline theology, in turn, enabled him to develop the first philosophically sophisticated, biblically sound, and comprehensive Christian view of the world and of history. Such a Christian philosophy was necessary to combat pagan philosophies, including Platonism, the philosophy he considered closest to Christianity. All such philosophies were corrupt and incapable of bringing people to God. Augustine’s Christian philosophy was expounded most fully in one of his last works, The City of God, widely regarded as one of the five or ten most important books in the history of Western thought.19

Augustine’s teaching on apologetical issues has inspired apologists and theologians from his day to the present. In his approach, faith and reason are interactive in coming to know the true God in Jesus Christ. Reason precedes faith in that a rational mind and recognition of the truth of what is to be believed must exist if we are to believe anything.20 But faith precedes reason in that the truths of the Christian faith are in large part unseen—not only is God invisible, but the redemptive acts of God in Jesus Christ occurred in the past and cannot be directly witnessed. Because these truths cannot be seen, they must be accepted on the authority of God’s revelation as given in Scripture and witnessed by the church.21 These truths can then be understood as the believer comes to appreciate their significance from the inside. “For understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe that thou mayest understand.”22 Augustine, then, was the first apologist to enunciate the principle of believing in order to understand, or faith seeking understanding (fides quaerens intellectum), but for him it was only one side of the coin. He frequently expressed this interactive or interdependent view of faith and reason in such statements as “For faith is understanding’s step; and understanding faith’s attainment.”23 Moreover, he emphasized (in his later writings) that both faith and reason are enabled by God’s grace. He declared that “no one is sufficient for himself, either to begin or to perfect faith; but our sufficiency is of God.”24

This does not mean that non-Christians know nothing about God. Augustine cited Romans 1:20 to show that some philosophers, especially Platonists, have been able from the creation to recognize the fact of a Creator God. The line of reasoning by which even pagans can be made to admit a Creator is essentially what philosophers would later call a cosmological argument, reasoning from the changeableness of all things in the world (Greek cosmos) to the existence of an unmade Maker of all things. This was one of a number of arguments by which Augustine reasoned that knowledge of God was available to pagans.25 But this knowledge cannot prevent them from falling into idolatry and polytheism.26 The true worship of God can be found only by placing faith in Jesus Christ.

Such faith is not a groundless faith: “they are much deceived, who think that we believe in Christ without any proofs concerning Christ.”27 Augustine wove the proofs he found compelling into an apologetic consisting of a number of strands. These proofs included fulfilled prophecy, the consistent monotheistic faith and worship of the church, the miracles of the Bible, and especially the “miracle” of the massive conversion of much of Roman society to faith in a crucified God even when such faith brought martyrdom.28

Anselm

By the seventh century Christianity had absorbed Greco-Roman culture and triumphed in its struggle against paganism. The church was the central vehicle of Western culture, and its apologists during the Middle Ages directed their efforts in three directions—toward unconverted Judaism, the threat of Islam, and the rational ground for belief.29 Two Christian philosophers of the Middle Ages who stand out for their contributions to apologetics, and whose works continue to be read and debated today, were Anselm and Thomas Aquinas.

Anselm (1033-1109), the bishop of Canterbury, was one of the most creative and original philosophers the Christian church has ever produced.30 He emphasized the side of Augustine’s view of faith and reason that viewed faith as prior to reason or understanding. “For I do not seek to understand in order to believe but I believe in order to understand [credo ut intelligam].”31 Although his philosophical arguments are often treated simply as rationalistic proofs designed to convince atheists, for him they were expressions of the search for understanding of one who already believed. On the other hand, he did intend at least some of his arguments as proofs to answer unbelievers and to confront them with the truth, as we shall see.

The most famous by far of these philosophical arguments has come to be known as the ontological argument,32 the development of which in Anselm’s Proslogion was a groundbreaking effort in apologetics. The essence of the argument is that the notion of a being of unsurpassable greatness is logically inescapable. From the idea of “that than which nothing greater can be thought,” Anselm inferred the existence or being (Greek ontos, hence “ontological” argument) of God.

The argument has been interpreted in several markedly divergent ways. Frequently it has been treated as a rational proof of the existence of God, and as such it has usually (but not always) been rejected by both Christian and non-Christian philosophers. Some philosophers have taken it to prove that if there is a God, he must be a necessary being (that is, a being that must exist, that cannot not exist) rather than a contingent being (one that might or might not have existed). Others have argued that it proves that necessary existence must be acknowledged for some being, either for the cosmos itself or for a being transcendent to the cosmos. Still others have offered radical reinterpretations of the argument. For example, Karl Barth took it to mean that God must reveal himself in order to be known. Charles Hartshorne reworked it to prove his “process” view that God is not the greatest possible being but is forever becoming a greater being and, in comparison to all others, is unsurpassably great. This bewildering diversity of interpretations of Anselm testifies to the provocative genius of his argument.

Anselm’s other major contribution to apologetics is found in his book Cur Deus Homo (“Why God became a man” or “Why the God-man”), in which he argued that God became a man because only God in his infinite being could provide an infinite satisfaction or atonement for man’s sin.33 Anselm prefaced the work with the observation that the church’s teachers discussed “the rational basis of our faith . . . not only to confound the foolishness of believers and to break through their hardheartedness, but also in order to nourish those who, having hearts already cleansed by faith, delight in the rational basis of our faith—a rational basis for which we ought to hunger once [we have] the certainty of faith.”34 The first part of the work “contains the answers of believers to the objections of unbelievers who repudiate the Christian faith because they regard it as incompatible with reason. And this book goes on to prove by rational necessity—Christ being removed from sight, as if there had never been anything known about Him—that no man can possibly be saved without Him.”35 At the beginning of the book Anselm explained that he wrote it at the request of other believers. They asked for the book “not in order to approach faith by way of reason but in order to delight in the comprehension and contemplation of the doctrines which they believe, as well as in order to be ready, as best they can, always to give a satisfactory answer to everyone who asks of them a reason for the hope which is in us.”36 Later Anselm pointed out that “although they [unbelievers] seek a rational basis because they do not believe whereas we seek it because we do believe, nevertheless it is one and the same thing that both we and they are seeking.”37

These statements in Cur Deus Homo make it clear that Anselm did see his work as apologetic in purpose. While careful to disavow any intention of displacing faith as the basis of Christian certainty, Anselm did hope to offer reasoned arguments that would show unbelievers that Christian faith has a rational basis. Evidently he viewed these arguments as designed to render unbelievers without rational excuse and even to persuade them to accept the Christian faith. But while such arguments might help in bringing a person to faith, for Anselm such faith would have to be placed, not in his rational arguments, but in the God-man himself.

Thomas Aquinas

In the thirteenth century Christian Europe was shaken by the rediscovery and distribution of the philosophical works of Aristotle and the strong impetus given to the Aristotelian worldview by the very capable Spanish-Arab philosopher Averroes. The growing influence of Averroist thought in European universities led to a crisis for Christian thought. Some scholars at the universities were embracing an uncritical Aristotelianism, while others, especially high-ranking church officials, uncritically condemned anything Aristotelian. Albert the Great was one of the earliest philosophers to rise to this challenge, writing OntheUnityoftheIntellectagainst Averroes. But it was Albert’s disciple, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), who would offer a response to this challenge that would change the course of Christian philosophy and apologetics.38

Aquinas sought to combat the challenge of the Greco-Arabic worldview by creating a Christian philosophy utilizing Aristotelian categories and logic. In the SummaContra Gentiles, he presented an apologetic directed primarily against Averroism but also offering a sweeping, comprehensive Christian philosophy in Aristotelian terms.39 His SummaTheologiae was a systematic theology intended to instruct Christian students in theology; it is important for its opening apologetic sections and its theology of faith.40

The view of faith and reason taken by Aquinas is often contrasted sharply with that of Augustine, but despite semantic and structural differences, their views are not very far apart. According to Aquinas, some truths about God are discoverable through reason or through faith, while others are discoverable only through faith. Yet even those truths discoverable through reason are commended to faith because our reason is finite, prone to error, clouded by sin, and always uncertain, while faith is absolutely reliable because it is founded on God’s revelation.

Aquinas is perhaps best known for his five ways, five arguments for the existence of God. These theistic arguments have been the subject of enormous debate for over two centuries.41 Aquinas himself did not put great emphasis on the five ways, which take up only a few pages in both Summas. According to Aquinas, that God (or, a God) exists is vaguely recognized by all; that it is God, however, is not universally recognized. God’s existence may be inferred from the nature of the world as changing, causative, contingent, graduated, and ordered (the five ways). These proofs (according to Aquinas himself) show that a God exists, but do not prove God per se; for Thomas, faith in God ought to be based on his revelation in Scripture, not on the proofs. The proofs were apparently offered not as a refutation of atheism (which was not a serious option in Aquinas’s day), but to show the coherence of Christianity with Aristotelianism.

Interestingly, Aquinas was himself a critic of certain types of theistic proofs. For example, he rejected Anselm’s ontological argument. Aquinas gave particular attention to arguments based on philosophical proofs against the eternity of the world. He concluded that philosophy could neither prove nor disprove the eternity of the world and therefore could not prove God’s existence from the fact of the world’s origination in time. Instead, he insisted, we believe that the world is not eternal because we know from God’s revelation in Scripture that the world was created by God.

Aquinas used the traditional evidences for Christianity in much the same fashion as Augustine, including the conversion of the masses, fulfilled prophecy, and miracles.42 He was careful to point out, though, that these arguments show that Christianity is plausible and can be used to refute objections, but cannot be used to prove Christianity to nonbelievers.

The Reformation

The primary concern of the Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century was the doctrine of salvation. In their view the Aristotelianism of the Scholastics—the medieval theologians on whose teachings the sixteenth-century Roman Catholic system was based—had led to a confusion and perversion of the gospel of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. Moreover, the Renaissance was marked by an infatuation with pagan antiquity, especially Plato and Neoplatonism, and the result was a further corruption of the Christian message in what came to be known as humanism. Originally humanism was essentially an intellectual approach to literature and learning, emphasizing the study of the classics (and of the Bible) directly instead of through medieval commentaries. By the sixteenth century, though, Catholic humanism (as represented, for instance, by Erasmus) was characterized by a man-centered philosophy emphasizing human dignity and freedom at the expense of the biblical teachings on sin and grace.43

The doctrine of justification by faith in Jesus Christ alone was the heart and soul of the ministry of Martin Luther (1483-1546), the Augustinian monk who lit the torch of the Reformation with his Ninety-five Theses protesting legalistic abuses in the church.44 In Luther’s estimation reason, particularly as employed in medieval theology, had obscured the gospel of justification. He therefore emphasized the limitations of reason and rejected the traditional theological project of employing logic and philosophy to explicate and defend the Christian faith.

Luther admitted that non-Christians can gain a “general” knowledge about God through reason, discerning that a God exists, that he is good and powerful, and the like. However, reason is incapable of helping them know who the true God is or how to be justified in his sight. Such “particular” knowledge is available only in the gospel, and can be appropriated only by faith. Not only is reason unhelpful in gaining a saving knowledge of God, it is actually an enemy of faith.

If Luther was the father and chief polemicist of the Reformation, John Calvin (1509-1564)45 was arguably its chief theologian. His Institutes of the Christian Religion and biblical commentaries are still read and discussed today, even by nontheologians. As with Luther, Calvin’s principal apologetic labors were directed against Roman Catholic criticisms of the Reformation gospel.

Unlike Luther, Calvin held that faith is always reasonable. However, he also insisted that faith often seems unreasonable to us because our reason is blinded by sin and spiritual deception. Such blindness is evident in the philosophies of the pagans, which at times come close to recognizing the truth but in the end always distort the truth of God’s revelation of himself in nature. To remedy our spiritual blindness, God has given us his Word in Scripture, which is so much clearer and fuller in its revelation, and, through the redeeming work of Jesus Christ, God has also given us his Spirit, who enables us to understand his Word. Because God’s Word comes with his own divine, absolute authority, it cannot be subjected to our reasoning or tests. Faith needs no rational justification and is more certain than rationally justified knowledge, because it is based on God’s revelation in Scripture.

Apologetics Faces Skepticism

Until the post-Reformation period most Europeans took Christianity for granted, and the major religious debates were primarily intra-Christian disputes about the meaning of certain key doctrines of the faith. But the seventeenth century saw the rise of religious skepticism that challenged the very truth of the Christian faith. This skepticism led to new developments in apologetics. Some apologists responded to the rationalistic critiques of Christian doctrine by expressing a skepticism of their own—regarding the reliability of human reason—and proposing an approach to religion that emphasizes faith as a response of the heart. Other apologists accepted the rationalistic challenge and sought to answer it by proving that Christianity was just as rational as the conclusions of modern science.46 These two approaches were typified by Blaise Pascal in the seventeenth century and Joseph Butler in the eighteenth century.

In his classic work Pensées (“Thoughts”), the French Catholic mathematician and apologist Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) rejected the traditional rational arguments for God’s existence and emphasized the personal, relational aspects involved in a non-Christian coming to faith in Jesus Christ. Pascal pointed out that some things that are clear to one group of people may be unclear or doubtful to another group. He was one of the first apologists to argue that apologetics should take into account the differences among people. Christians who would defend the faith must seek to show that it is not irrational, that it is great news if it is true, and that in fact it can be proved to be true.

Pascal sought to strike a balance between two extremes. He did not want to abandon reason altogether, but he also did not want its importance or value in knowing Christ to be exaggerated. God has given enough evidence of the truth of Christianity that those who want to know the truth will see it, but he has not shown himself in a way that would compel faith in those who don’t care or don’t want to believe. Pascal was especially concerned about those who don’t give serious thought to the issue. He urged them to realize that if Christianity is true and they fail to believe, they are in most serious danger.

Despite the eloquence and depth of Pascal’s “thoughts,” his approach to the defense of the faith was to remain a minority report. Natural science, through such giants as Galileo and Newton, achieved major breakthroughs during the seventeenth century and revolutionized our view of the world. In the wake of these developments, most apologists for the next three centuries understood the apologetic task as primarily one of showing the scientific credibility of the Christian faith. More broadly, apologetics became focused on providing empirical evidence, whether scientific or historical, in support of Christianity. Laying the groundwork for this empirical approach was John Locke (1632-1704), a British philosopher who developed one of the earliest formulations of empiricism.

The classic work of apologetics in an empirical mode was Joseph Butler’s book The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature (1736). Butler (1692-1752), an Anglican bishop, sought to defuse objections to the orthodox Christian faith posed by deists, who favored a purely natural religion that was in principle available to all people in all times and places and that could be proved by reason. On this basis they came to question and finally reject the notion of a revealed religion that could not be rationally proved and was known only to those who had heard the revelation.

Butler argued, in response, that the intellectual difficulties found by deists in believing the Christian revelation have analogies in our knowledge of the natural world. In making this case he could assume as a given that God exists, since the deists agreed with this assumption. His use of analogies was not intended to prove either that God exists or that Christianity is true, but merely that it is not unreasonable to believe in the Christian revelation. This was the burden of almost the entirety of Butler’s book; only in a concluding chapter did he review the positive evidences for the truth of Christianity. Throughout his book Butler’s approach was empirical, focusing on facts and evidences, and the conclusions were couched in terms of probability. In taking this approach he sought to meet the deists on their own grounds, and he denied that he thought Christian faith should be based on the sorts of probabilistic arguments he was presenting.

The Rise of Modern Apologetics

Butler’s apologetic efforts in The Analogy of Religion were widely regarded as a worthy response to the natural religion of the deists. However, Christian apologetics was forced to reinvent itself with the advent of the Enlightenment.47 The skepticism of the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) prepared the way for this movement, which rejected all revelation claims and all natural religion or natural theology, and declared the autonomy of human reason. Hume convinced many that the teleological or design argument, the argument from miracles, and other standard Christian apologetic arguments were unsound. The German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who reported having been awakened from his “dogmatic slumbers” by Hume’s writings, likewise critiqued the cosmological and ontological arguments for the existence of God.

These successive waves of attack on Christianity forced orthodox Christians to develop apologetic responses. Such responses varied depending on the theological convictions and philosophical temperament of the apologist as well as the content of the unbelieving attack.

One of the earliest apologists to respond to Hume was William Paley (1743-1805). Paley systematized the evidential arguments of this time in two works, AViewoftheEvidencesofChristianity and NaturalTheology. The latter work was a classic presentation of the teleological argument. He skillfully multiplied illustrations (most famously his illustration of the watch found in the desert, for which an intelligent maker must be posited) and arguments for design and for the evidential value of miracles. The force of his apologetic was severely weakened, though, by the rise of evolutionary biology in the late nineteenth century. Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) seemed to offer a naturalistic explanation for the order and diversity in life, encouraging many in the West to abandon belief in God as the Creator. Paley also defended the reliability of the New Testament writings. In the nineteenth century such historical apologetics, centering on the New Testament accounts of Jesus’ life, death, and especially his resurrection, came to the fore with works by such apologists as Richard Whately and Simon Greenleaf.

An older contemporary of Paley was Thomas Reid (1710-1796), a Scottish Calvinist who developed a philosophy later known as Scottish Common-Sense Realism. Reid’s philosophy, like Paley’s, was in large part an answer to his fellow countryman Hume. Whereas Hume had been skeptical not only of miracles and the existence of God but also of cause-and-effect and of objective right and wrong, Reid held that our knowledge of all these things was simply a matter of common sense. Philosophers who question these things have let theory obscure the obvious. Our knowledge of cause and effect and right and wrong is self-evident and an incorrigible aspect of our constitution as created by God, whether we acknowledge God’s existence or not.

Reid’s epistemology (or theory of knowledge) was dominant at Princeton Theological Seminary in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The “Old Princetonians” affirmed that one could argue for the truth of the Christian revelation on the basis of certain “common sense” presuppositions about the nature of truth, reason, morality, and the world. Charles Hodge (1797-1878), the most famous Calvinist theologian at Old Princeton, maintained that although reason must submit to God’s revelation in Scripture, reason must first discern whether Scripture is indeed a revelation from God. The non-Christian must therefore be invited to use reason and “common sense” to evaluate the evidences (miracles, fulfilled prophecy, etc.) for Christianity. Hodge also maintained the validity of most of the traditional arguments for God’s existence, even recommending the works of Butler and Paley. B. B. Warfield (1851-1921), one of the last professors at Princeton before its reorganization and shift to liberal theology, continued Hodge’s apologetic approach. The thrust of Warfield’s apologetic was to argue against liberalism that a Christianity devoid of supernaturalism is, first, a Christianity that denies God, and second, really no Christianity at all.

In nineteenth-century Europe the efforts of Christian thinkers to defend Christian faith were directed largely against the philosophies of Kant and another German philosopher, Hegel. In Denmark the “melancholy Dane,” Søren Kierkegaard (1818-1855), strongly denounced both the cold confessional Lutheran orthodoxy and the abstract philosophical system of Hegel. Kierkegaard (pronounced KEER-kuh-gore) called on Christians to repent of their merely intellectual profession and to believe passionately and personally in Christ. His PhilosophicalFragments and ConcludingUnscientificPostscript rejected the traditional theistic proofs and arguments for the deity of Christ on the grounds that a rational approach to Christianity ran afoul of the central paradox of Jesus Christ as God incarnate.

Somewhat later the Scottish theologian James Orr (1844-1913) responded to the Enlightenment challenge. He was one of the first apologists to present Christianity as a worldview, arguing that the weight of the evidence from various quarters supported the Christian view of God and the world.

In the Netherlands one of Orr’s contemporaries, the Calvinist theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920), developed the notion of the antithesis. There is, said Kuyper, an absolute antithesis between the two sets of principles to which Christians and non-Christians are fundamentally committed (for example, God as sovereign versus man as autonomous). In short, Christians and non-Christians cannot see eye to eye on matters of fundamental principle. The non-Christian is incapable of verifying or testing the revelation of God in Scripture because, since Scripture is the Word of God, its teachings must be accepted as first principles or not at all. Therefore Christianity cannot be proved to the non-Christian on the basis of philosophical arguments or historical evidences, because these presuppose Christian principles. There can be no common or neutral ground between Christian and non-Christian. Thus, traditional apologetics must be abandoned. Negatively, Christian apologists should seek to expose the anti-Christian religious root of all non-Christian thought. Positively, they should attempt to model the truth of Christianity to the world by reconstructing society according to biblical principles.

Kuyper’s seminal ideas were developed into a full-fledged philosophy by others, among whom the best-known figure was Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977). According to Dooyeweerd, traditional apologetics, especially that of Thomas Aquinas, was based on an unbiblical dualism between nature and grace—between what can be known by the non-Christian by nature through reason alone and what can be known only by God’s gracious revelation through faith. The task of Christian philosophy is to commend the Christian worldview while exposing the inadequacy of all other worldviews to provide a secure footing for knowledge and ethics.

Another Christian thinker influenced by Kuyper was Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987), professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary. Van Til’s approach was essentially a creative synthesis of the Old Princetonian and Kuyperian philosophical-apologetical positions. He agreed with the Common-Sense Realist view taught at Old Princeton that sense perception, logic, moral values, and the like were guaranteed to us by God’s creating us and the world. He also agreed with Old Princeton that apologetics should offer proof for the Christian position. But Van Til integrated this position with the Kuyperian doctrine of the antithesis. Common-Sense Realism had held that non-Christians live in a God-created universe and thus operate on the basis of Christian presuppositions, whether they acknowledge that fact or not. For the Old Princetonians this meant that Christians might appeal to these shared presuppositions in traditional apologetic arguments. In Van Til’s thinking, however, the Kuyperian doctrine of the antithesis indicated that the non-Christian so suppresses these presuppositions when thinking about matters of principle that no argument appealing to them will connect.

For Van Til the great mistake of traditional apologetics was in using rationalistic arguments that concluded that the truths of Christianity are probably true. He thought such probabilistic arguments—which he claimed dominated apologetics since Butler’s Analogy—detracted from the certainty of faith and the absolute authority of Scripture as the written word of God. In place of such arguments, he urged Christian apologists to argue by presupposition. Such a presuppositional apologetic has two steps. The first is to show that non-Christian systems of thought are incapable of accounting for rationality and morality—to show that ultimately all non-Christian systems of thought fall into irrationalism. The second step is to commend the Christian view as giving the only possible presuppositional foundation for thought and life. For Van Til, such a presuppositional argument is the only legitimate apologetic method.

While Van Til was teaching his presuppositional version of Reformed apologetics in Philadelphia, on the other side of the Atlantic the most popular Christian apologist of the twentieth century was giving radio addresses in Britain and writing books. C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) was a scholar of medieval literature who converted to Christianity in midlife. His apologetic works included The Problem of Pain (on the problem of reconciling human suffering with an all-good God), The Screwtape Letters (from a senior devil instructing a junior devil in the art of temptation), Miracles (defending belief in miracles), and Mere Christianity (defending belief in God and Christ). Lewis insisted that Christianity was based on reasonable evidence, and that once a person had embraced the faith, the true attitude of faith was to believe despite such seeming evidence against Christianity as one’s personal suffering and losses. Among the most popular arguments he developed was the “trilemma” (as it was later called): since Jesus claimed to be God, one must either (1) reject him as a liar, (2) dismiss him as a lunatic, or (3) accept him as Lord. Since the first two alternatives contradict Christ’s evident sincerity and sanity, Lewis argued, we must conclude that he really is Lord. Lewis’s writings have had a tremendous influence on Christian apologetics. Among contemporary apologists most indebted to Lewis is the Roman Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft, whose articulation of the gospel is surprisingly evangelical and whose philosophy is essentially Thomistic.

An older contemporary of C. S. Lewis who took a very different view of apologetics was the Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968). While Lewis had converted from skepticism to Anglican Christianity, Barth had converted from German theological liberalism to a radically Christ-centered faith. Unable to swallow liberalism any longer and unwilling to go back to a premodern, conservative Protestant orthodoxy, Barth found it necessary to reconstruct Christian theology according to a new paradigm. His central and constant claim was that God is known only in Jesus Christ. On the basis of this premise, Barth rejected both liberalism, which thought it could find God in man’s own moral and spiritual sense, and fundamentalism, which, Barth argued (erroneously), treated the Bible as an end rather than as a means to knowing God in Christ. He also rejected natural theology, the project of trying to prove God from nature, for the same reason. According to Barth, apologetics as usually conceived is unfaithful to the principle that God can be known only through his self-revelation in Jesus Christ.

Conservative evangelicals generally have rejected Barth’s approach to theology and disagreed with his negative assessment of apologetics. However, some evangelicals who dissent from the belief in biblical inerrancy while maintaining an evangelical view of Christ and salvation have expressed appreciation for Barth, even while critiquing some of his views. Notable in this regard are Bernard Ramm and Donald Bloesch. Ramm, whose textbooks on apologetics were widely used in conservative evangelical circles in the 1960s and 1970s, in the 1980s argued that Barth’s theology, though needing some correction, provided a paradigm for avoiding the extremes of liberalism and fundamentalism. Bloesch, a systematic theologian, agrees with Barth’s criticisms of traditional apologetics but is more critical of his theology.

More conservative evangelical apologetics was dominated in the second half of the twentieth century by the debates over Van Til’s presuppositionalism. During the 1950s three American apologists offered three different answers to Van Til’s challenge to traditional apologetics. One was Gordon H. Clark (1902-1985), a Reformed philosopher whose emphasis on deductive logic led to a fierce debate with Van Til that divided the presuppositionalist movement. Clark maintained that the laws of logic and the propositions of Scripture provide the only reliable basis for knowledge. Clark’s most eminent disciple was Carl F. H. Henry (1913-2003), one of the leaders of the new evangelicalism represented by such institutions as Fuller Theological Seminary and the magazine Christianity Today.

The second major apologist of the 1950s was Edward John Carnell (1919-1967), another new evangelical, who was president of Fuller Seminary for much of the 1950s. Carnell’s books set forth a semi-presuppositional apologetic that approached Christianity as a hypothesis to be verified by showing that it alone is systematically consistent and practically livable. Like the presuppositionalists, Carnell rejected the traditional proofs for the existence of God. However, against the presuppositionalists he insisted that in the nature of the case apologetic arguments for the historical truth claims of Christianity, most notably the resurrection of Jesus, could only be based on probabilities. Carnell taught a generation of students, many of whom went on to become accomplished apologists themselves. Among these was Gordon Lewis, who defended a Carnellian approach to apologetics in his textbook Defending Christianity’s Truth Claims.

The third major apologist to emerge in the 1950s was Stuart Hackett. Unlike the apologists mentioned so far, Hackett was avowedly non-Calvinistic. He called for “the resurrection of theism” (in a book of that title) as a rational philosophical system, defended the traditional theistic proofs, and offered one of the first detailed critiques of Van Til. Whereas Dooyeweerd, Van Til, Clark, Carnell, and many other apologists agreed that Hume and Kant’s criticisms of traditional theistic proofs and evidential apologetics were valid, Hackett strenuously disagreed and in particular offered a head-on critique of Kant’s criticisms.

William Lane Craig, a student of Hackett, has published a number of major apologetic works in which he has moved from a position similar to Hackett’s to a more eclectic one. Craig’s writings are evenly divided between sophisticated defenses of the existence of God (based primarily on philosophical and scientific forms of the cosmological argument) and equally sophisticated historical and theological defenses of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Although his approach has strong affinities with evidentialism, in general his apologetic approach is best classified in the classical tradition.

In 1971 Jerusalem and Athens, a volume of essays in honor of Van Til, was published. It included several critical essays to which Van Til responded. Beginning with the publication of this book, at least two different ways of understanding and developing Van Til’s presuppositionalism have been defended. The first one (which actually predates Jerusalem and Athens) may be called the transcendental interpretation, and was articulated especially by Robert D. Knudsen (1924-2000), a former student of Van Til who became his colleague at Westminster, where he taught apologetics until 1995. According to Knudsen, Van Til’s apologetic is best understood as transcendental, that is, as one that presents Christianity as the only position that can give an adequate account of the possibility of truth, reason, value, and our existence. For Knudsen, Van Til’s apologetic was essentially Kuyperian, and Van Til should be regarded as a member of the school of the Calvinistic philosophy, along with Dooyeweerd and other Reformed thinkers.

The second interpretation of Van Til’s thought originated from John M. Frame, a student of Van Til who became a professor of apologetics at Westminster’s sister campus in California. Frame developed an epistemological theory he called perspectivalism that sought to integrate rational, empirical, and existential (or personal) aspects of human knowledge. In his 1987 book The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, Frame presented perspectivalism as a systematic refinement of Van Til’s position, giving more positive appreciation to logic and factual evidence while remaining true to Van Til’s vision of a thoroughly Reformed, presuppositional apologetic. Frame has also applied his perspectivalism to ethics, while his colleague Vern S. Poythress, a professor of New Testament at Westminster in Philadelphia, has applied perspectivalism to systematic theology and hermeneutics.

In the 1970s Van Til’s most notable critic was John Warwick Montgomery, a Lutheran apologist who contributed a satirical essay to Jerusalem and Athens entitled “Once upon an A Priori” that characterized Van Til’s position as abandoning all reasoned argument for the Christian faith. Montgomery, inspired especially by the nineteenth-century legal scholar and apologist Simon Greenleaf, contended for an “evidentialist,” empirically based apologetic that focused on the historical argument for the resurrection of Jesus based on principles of legal evidence. Evidentialists in Montgomery’s school of thought also generally accord more weight to scientific evidences for creation than to philosophical arguments for God’s existence. Numerous apologists today focus their efforts in an “evidential” direction, though without necessarily subscribing to a thoroughgoing evidentialist theory of apologetics. Such evidential apologists would include J. P. Moreland, who has made significant contributions to developing a Christian philosophy of science as well as defending the historical reliability of the Gospels. Another evangelical who favored an evidence-based apologetic and critiqued Van Til in Jerusalem and Athens was Clark Pinnock. In the 1980s and 1990s Pinnock, like Bernard Ramm, moved away from the conservative stance he had taken earlier, dissenting from biblical inerrancy and questioning other aspects of evangelical theology.

Also critical of Van Til was Norman Geisler, an evangelical scholar who argued for a classical apologetic based mainly on the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Although several Roman Catholic theologians, such as Étienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain, have defended a Thomistic approach to apologetics and theology, Geisler has been one of the few contemporary evangelical Protestants to advocate such an approach. His approach involves three main stages of argument. First, he examines various limited theories of knowledge that attempt to base all knowledge solely in reason, or in empirical fact, or in experience and shows them to be inadequate. In place of such epistemologies, he defends the twin principles of unaffirmability (anything that cannot consistently be affirmed is false) and undeniability (anything that cannot be consistently denied is true) as providing a reliable and adequate test for truth. Second, Geisler examines all the major worldviews (including atheism, pantheism, etc.) and attempts to show that only theism (the monotheistic worldview common to traditional forms of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) passes the test of truth. A key aspect of this second stage is a reconstructed version of the Thomistic cosmological argument. Third, Geisler argues on probabilistic grounds that Christianity is the true form of theism. Here his argument focuses on the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the historical reliability of the biblical writings. His works have contributed greatly to evangelical apologetics and have been influential and appreciated even among those who do not accept his Thomistic method.

Another apologist who published apologetic works in the late 1960s and early 1970s was Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984). Like Van Til, Schaeffer emphasized the need to challenge non-Christian presuppositions, especially the relativism that became so prevalent in Western culture during the tumultuous 1960s. Also like Van Til, Schaeffer criticized apologetic arguments that were based on probabilities rather than certainties. Schaeffer, however, invited non-Christians to test the claims of Christianity to see if it is consistent and livable, making his apologetic in some respects more akin to Carnell’s than to Van Til’s.

During the same period Reformed philosopher Alvin Plantinga published his God and Other Minds. In this and other books Plantinga led the way in developing a school of thought known as the “new Reformed epistemology,” which was not influenced positively or negatively by Van Til. Plantinga argued that belief in God is rationally justified even if the believer cannot offer any evidence for that belief, just as we are rational to believe other things (notably in the existence of other minds) even if we cannot prove they exist. The focus of the new Reformed epistemology is on justifying belief rather than challenging unbelief. Yet its approach has some affinities with presuppositionalism, perhaps most notably its rejection of evidentialism (the claim that beliefs are rational only as they are justified by appeals to evidence). The school came into prominence in 1983 with the publication of Faith and Rationality, co-edited by Plantinga and Wolterstorff. The new Reformed epistemology and presuppositionalism are the two major varieties of Reformed apologetics today.

During the last two decades of the twentieth century, a number of apologists have attempted to integrate the subjective, existential perspective propounded by Kierkegaard into an essentially traditional apologetic; notable among these is the Christian philosopher C. Stephen Evans. Still other apologists have argued explicitly for the usefulness of a variety of apologetic methods in encounters with persons of differing beliefs and temperaments. A recent example of the latter is David K. Clark, whose book Dialogical Apologetics defends a “person-centered approach” to apologetics as distinguished from what he views as competing “content-oriented” approaches.

While debate over diverse apologetic methods continues, an increasing number of thinkers are claiming that the age of apologetics is over. These thinkers argue that apologetics assumes the ideal of rational knowledge that is the basis of modern rationalistic objections to Christianity. With the supposed death of modern rationalism and the advent of postmodernism, both anti-Christian rationalism and Christian rationalistic apologetics are said to be outmoded. Other Christian thinkers, on the other hand, argue that the contemporary situation is more complex. Postmodernism, they suggest, has not so much abandoned the rationalist ideal as it has qualified it. A place remains for apologetics, they conclude, though it must take into account the recent developments of postmodern thought.

The growing diversity of approaches to the study and practice of apologetics has made it necessary to devise some way of classifying these approaches and sorting out the various issues over which they differ. In the next chapter we will present an overview of these issues and offer an analysis of the major apologetic approaches.

For Further Study

Brown, Colin. Christianity and Western Thought: A History of Philosophers, Ideas, and Movements. Vol. 1, From the Ancient World to the Age of Enlightenment. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1990. Tends toward a fideist view of apologetics and Christian philosophy.

Bush, L. Russ, ed. Classical Readings in Christian Apologetics, a.d. 100-1800. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, Academie, 1983. See also the concluding chapter reviewing the history of apologetics since 1800. (Russ uses the term classical in its more customary sense, not in the technical sense used in this book.)

Craig, William Lane. The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus During the Deist Controversy. Texts and Studies in Religion 23. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1985. Closest thing to an evidentialist review of the history of apologetics. In a lengthy first chapter, Craig covers the New Testament, the church fathers, and Thomas Aquinas (1-70).

Frame, John M. Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought. Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1995. See especially Part IV, where Frame, a presuppositionalist, presents a more positive assessment of the thought of classical and evidentialist apologists than the assessment of his teacher Van Til (see below).

Mayers, Ronald B. Balanced Apologetics: Using Evidences and Presuppositions in Defense of the Faith. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1996. Includes an in-depth study of the history of apologetics that seeks to balance the classical and evidentialist approaches with Reformed apologetics (87-195).

Van Til, Cornelius. A Christian Theory of Knowledge. Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1969. The standard presuppositionalist survey of the history of Christian philosophy and apologetics, giving special attention to the church fathers, Roman Catholic thought, the differences between Kuyper and Warfield, and Buswell’s apologetic.

1Unfortunately, there is no satisfactory full-length textbook on the history of apologetics written from an evangelical perspective. The standard textbook remains Avery Cardinal Dulles, A History of Apologetics (New York: Corpus Books, 1971; reprint, Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 1999; 2d ed., Modern Apologetics Library, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), a Roman Catholic work that gives scant attention to modern conservative Protestant and evangelical apologetics. (All subsequent citations except as noted are from the second edition.) The second edition adds about six pages on twentieth-century evangelical apologetics (353-59). (For our part, we do not discuss modern Roman Catholic apologetics in this book.) For a liberal Protestant overview, see J. K. S. Reid, Christian Apologetics (London: Hodder & Stoughton; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969). Perhaps the best evangelical survey of the history of apologetics is found in Ronald B. Mayers, Balanced Apologetics: Using Evidences and Presuppositions in Defense of the Faith (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1996), 87-195. For an excellent collection of readings, see L. Russ Bush, ed., Classical Readings in Christian Apologetics, a.d. 100-1800 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan—Academie, 1983). Bush concludes with a chapter reviewing the history of apologetics since 1800. Closely following the history of apologetics are the following works dealing with specific issues: Bruce A. Demarest, General Revelation: Historical Views and Contemporary Issues (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982); William Lane Craig, The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus During the Deist Controversy, Texts and Studies in Religion, vol. 23 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1985). Textbooks on the history of philosophy are also relevant, especially up to about 1750. Besides the standard works in this area, we would single out Colin Brown, Christianity and Western Thought: A History of Philosophers, Ideas, and Movements, vol. 1, From the Ancient World to the Age of Enlightenment (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1990).

2On New Testament apologetics, see especially E. F. Scott, The Apologetics of the New Testament (New York: Putman, 1907); F. F. Bruce, The Defense of the Gospel in the New Testament, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977).

12On apologetics in the second and third centuries, see Dulles, History of Apologetics, 27-55; Henry Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition: Studies in Justin, Clement, and Origen (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966); Mayers, Balanced Apologetics, 173-95; Craig, Historical Argument, 26-46; Robert M. Grant, Greek Apologists of the Second Century (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1988); Ford Lewis Battles, The Apologists, Study Outline 1 (Allison Park, Pa.: Pickwick, 1991); Apologetics in the Roman Empire: Pagans, Jews, and Christians, ed. Edwards, Goodman, and Price (1999). The works of the church fathers from this period are still most conveniently found in a set of volumes edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to a.d. 325, rev. A. Cleveland Cox,10 vols. (1885; reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969).

29Dulles, History of Apologetics, 91. On apologetics and Christian philosophy during this period, see the classic study Étienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages (New York: Scribner, 1938).

40Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae: Latin Text and English Translation, Introduction, Notes, Appendices and Glossaries (London: Blackfriars, 1974). An accessible edition that includes all of Part I and generous portions of Parts II and III is Saint Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, rev. Daniel J. Sullivan, 2 Vols.; Great Books of the Western World, vols. 19-20 (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952). See also Peter Kreeft, A Summa of the “Summa”: The Essential Philosophical Passages of St. Thomas Aquinas’ “Summa Theologica” Edited and Explained for Beginners (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1990).

43On the origins of the Reformation and the teachings of the Reformers, see H. A. Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought, Illustrated by Key Documents (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966); Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers (Nashville: Broadman, 1985); Alister E. McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987).

44See chapter 16 for a detailed discussion of Luther’s approach to apologetics.

47Only the briefest survey of apologetics since the Enlightenment will be given here, since more extended discussions of the work of post-Enlightenment apologists will be presented in later chapters of the book. General studies relating to the history of apologetics during this period include Demarest, General Revelation, 93-225; Alan P. F. Sell, Defending and Declaring the Faith: Some Scottish Examples, 1860-1920 (Exeter, U.K.: Paternoster Press; Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard, 1987); Brown, Christianity and Western Thought, 235-330.

4. Issues and Methods In Apologetics

The preceding survey of the history of apologetics illustrates the wide variety of approaches that have been developed to defend the Christian faith since the first century. Christian apologists have faced different challenges from different quarters and at different times, and they have sought to defend their faith in a variety of ways. This has led to considerable disagreement over such metapologetical issues as the following:

the theory of knowledge one assumes in presenting Christianity as truth

the value of theistic proofs

the degree of certainty that Christianity provides

the relationship between faith and reason and between philosophy and Christianity

the role of evidences in apologetics

the existence and nature of common ground between Christians and non-Christians

Coming to terms with these issues and approaches is the purpose of this book.

Four Types of Apologetic Systems

Until the twentieth century, only a few writers grappled seriously with the issue of apologetic method. As Avery Dulles affirms, this is no longer the case: “The 20th century has seen more clearly than previous periods that apologetics stands or falls with the question of method. In the past few decades apologetical science has merged to an increasing degree with the epistemology of religious knowledge.”1 The reason for this close relationship between apologetic science and religious epistemology is that modern thought since Kant has been in epistemological crisis. How do we know what we think we know? This question has been viewed as especially troublesome for religious knowledge claims, and Christian apologetics has necessarily been forced to deal with it.

Because of the importance of epistemology for modern doubts and denials of the Christian revelation, the most fundamental assumptions that distinguish the apologetic systems that have developed in modern Christian thought are epistemological. Edwin A. Burtt, in his Types of Religious Philosophy, cataloged four principal methods of pursuing theological questions: the rationalistic, the empirical, the authoritarian, and the intuitive.2 Applying Burtt’s typology of religious philosophy to apologetics in particular, we may distinguish four basic approaches to apologetics, which we have called classical apologetics (corresponding to what Burtt calls the rationalistic method), evidentialism (empirical), Reformed apologetics (authoritarian), and fideism (intuitive).3 Each of these four approaches to apologetics, though it had precursors in earlier periods of church history, emerged as a distinct approach to apologetics grounded in an explicit epistemology in the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. We will briefly describe each of these here.

Classical apologetics, as we are using the term in this book, refers to an apologetic approach that emphasizes the use of logical criteria (for example, the law of noncontradiction, self-consistency, comprehensiveness, coherence) in determining the validity of competing religious philosophies. These criteria are used to refute the truth claims of non-Christian worldviews and to establish the existence of God through theistic proofs. The approach in its modern form is characterized by a “two-step” method of apologetics in which one first makes a case for theism (the worldview that affirms the existence of one Creator God) and then presents evidence that this God has revealed himself in Christ and in the Bible. The most famous Christian thinker commonly regarded as paving the way for this approach was the thirteenth-century theologian Thomas Aquinas. In modern evangelical apologetics it is perhaps best represented by Norman L. Geisler. We discuss this approach in Part Two, “Classical Apologetics: It Stands to Reason.”

Evidentialism seeks to ground the Christian faith primarily on empirically and historically verifiable facts. Evidentialists often draw a parallel between the scientific method of testing theories and theological verification. They argue that a high degree of probability can be established in favor of Christianity, and that this is the same kind of credibility as that associated with confirmed scientific laws. The evidence does not necessarily constitute proof, but it is sufficient to answer objections and to show that belief in Christianity is not unreasonable. Rather than a two-step method of first defending theism and then defending Christianity, as in the classical approach, evidentialists consider the evidence for creation, for the inspiration of the Bible, and for the divine identity of Christ (especially based on his resurrection from the dead) as part of an overall case for the reality of the Christian God. Joseph Butler is commonly regarded as the pioneer of this apologetic type, and in recent decades it has been especially associated with the Lutheran scholar John Warwick Montgomery. We discuss this approach in Part Three, “Evidentialist Apologetics: Just the Facts.”

The term classical apologetics is sometimes used to refer to evidentialism as well as the more rationally-oriented form discussed above. We have chosen to use the term in its narrower sense for two reasons. First, evidentialism is a distinctly modern development that in some respects represents a repudiation of certain key aspects of the traditional, classical approach to apologetics. Second, what we are terming classical apologetics, though it emphasizes rationality in general and deductive reasoning in particular, should not be confused with the modern philosophical tradition known as rationalism, which regards the rational mind as the sole source of knowledge. The more “rational” approach to apologetics typically rejects rationalism in this sense. Other recent publications have also distinguished classical apologetics from evidentialism.4

Reformed apologetics argues that we ought to ground reason and fact on the truth of the Christian faith, rather than trying to prove or defend the faith on the basis of reason or fact.5 Empirical and rational approaches to religious truth are doomed to failure by the moral impairment (though not the technical efficiency) of the human mind fallen in sin; worse, they assume the self-sufficiency of human beings to employ reason and interpret the facts independent of divine revelation. Therefore, apologetic systems based on such epistemologies are both inadequate and inappropriate to defend the faith. The only means of argumentation between the two groups must be indirect, that is, on the level of fundamental assumptions or presuppositions. Most Reformed apologists seek to show that while non-Christian belief systems cannot account for the validity of reason, fact, and truth, Christian theism can. This approach was inspired by the theology of John Calvin; its most influential modern advocate was Cornelius Van Til. We discuss this approach in Part Four, “Reformed Apologetics: God Said It.”

Fideism may be (and has been) defined in a variety of ways. The term derives from the Latin fide, meaning “faith.” It has commonly been used as a pejorative term for the position that one should “just believe” in God or Christ apart from any reasoning or evidence. (Some critics have alleged that Reformed apologetics is fideistic in this sense; as we shall see, this characterization is mistaken.) More broadly, fideism maintains that human knowledge of truth (including, and especially, religious truth) is at bottom a personal matter of the heart or the will rather than of the intellect. Personal, existential experience with God cannot be grounded in rational analysis or scientific and historical evidences, since it is a matter of the heart. Fideists often stress the paradoxical and personal-encounter dimension of Christian truth. They emphasize the transcendence and hiddenness of God and repudiate natural theology and theistic proofs. Fideism argues from humanity’s basic existential needs to the fulfillment of those needs in Christianity. While in many respects fideism has tended to reject apologetics as an intellectual discipline, some Christian apologists have seen value in its emphasis on the personal, subjective dimension in faith and religious commitment. On the Roman Catholic side, Blaise Pascal is often regarded as having anticipated this approach. The Protestant fideist tradition, though, is based in Lutheran pietism and is rooted in significant ways in the thought of Martin Luther himself. (It should be emphasized that neither Pascal nor Luther can properly be described as fideists. Rather, certain elements of their thought anticipated or prepared the way for the eventual emergence of fideism.) The Christian thinker who represents fideism in its purest form is the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. We discuss the fideist perspective in Part Five, “Apologetics as Persuasion.”

Four Approaches to Apologetics

Classical

Evidentialist

Reformed

Fideist

proof

defense

refutation

persuasion

rational

empirical

authoritarian

intuitive

Thomas Aquinas

Joseph Butler

John Calvin

Martin Luther

Norman Geisler

John W. Montgomery

Cornelius Van Til

Søren Kierkegaard

“Tom”

“Joe”

“Cal”

“Martina”

How would astute advocates of these four approaches respond to the apologetic challenges posed by Sarah and Murali, our two hypothetical non-Christians? Recall that Sarah is a skeptic who has departed from the Christian faith because of its moral demands and who is troubled by the problem of evil, while Murali is a nominal Hindu living in America who believes all religions are basically the same. (See the preface for more detailed profiles of these two characters.) Our four astute apologists, each representing one the four approaches, we have named Tom, Joe, Cal, and Martina (see above chart for their respective approaches). Although we present specifics on how these approaches would be applied in conversations between these imaginary apologists and non-Christians in the remainder of this book, we offer a glimpse here.

Tom’s approach to both Sarah and Murali would follow a two-step method common in classical apologetics. First, he would expose the logical incoherence of their positions. He might explain to Sarah that the concept of evil on which she bases her rejection of God’s existence logically implies an absolute moral standard, which can only come from a transcendent Creator. Tom would probably tell Murali that it is logically impossible for religions that affirm such different worldviews as pantheism (Hinduism) and monotheism (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) all to be true. Second, Tom would offer carefully constructed answers to the non-Christians’ objections, proving that those objections have failed to prove any logical incoherence in the Christian position. He would likely respond to Sarah’s problem of evil by explaining that God has a higher purpose for allowing evil and will eventually overcome evil with good. He would probably also insist that while God has allowed evil, he is not its cause; human beings have caused evil by the exercise of their free will. In response to Murali’s argument that God must approve of different religions if he allowed so many to flourish, Tom would likewise attribute the different religions to the freedom of human beings to go their own way. He would then propose examining the worldview of each religion to determine which of them, if any, offered a coherent view of the world.

Joe’s basic approach as an evidentialist would be to present facts that he believes support the Christian position and undermine the non-Christians’ objections. He would probably point out to Sarah the abundant evidence for a good and powerful Creator and argue that this outweighs the evidence of evil against belief in God. The facts Joe adduces might be wide-ranging, but are likely to include scientific evidence for the universe’s beginning and intelligent design as well as historical evidence for the miraculous acts of God in the Bible. Joe would present the same facts to Murali as evidence against nontheistic religions and in support of the claim that the God of the Bible is actually the real God.

Cal’s Reformed approach would preclude making direct appeals to deductive reasoning or empirical facts in the manner of Tom or Joe. In Cal’s estimation, Sarah and Murali are committed to a spiritually jaundiced way of using reason and looking at facts. He would therefore take what he calls an indirect approach, which, like Tom’s, involves two basic steps. First, Cal would argue that both Sarah and Murali presuppose their own self-sufficiency or “autonomy” to judge for themselves what is true and right. Sarah’s judgment that God must not be good if he allows evil presupposes that she is able to determine for herself, from within herself, the standard of goodness to which even God must conform. Murali’s complaint that God should not have allowed so many different religions if he wanted us to believe in only one also presupposes his competency to judge what God should or should not do. Cal would then remind them of what they already know in their hearts: that they are not God and that their arrogant pretensions to autonomy are symptomatic of their fallenness with all mankind in sin. Second, Cal will argue that only on the presupposition that the God of Scripture is real can we even give a coherent account of the concepts of goodness and justice to which Sarah and Murali appeal in their arguments against Christianity. Sarah’s argument from the problem of evil presupposes that there is a standard of goodness against which evil is judged; yet, in denying the existence of God she is left without any rational basis for judging anything to be evil. Murali’s claim that God must accept many different religions since he has allowed them to flourish presupposes that God is just or fair, but this idea cannot be justified except on the basis that God is the personal Creator and Judge spoken of in Scripture.

Our fourth apologist, Martina, would take a very different approach from those of the other three. In her view the direct arguments of Tom and Joe and the indirect argument of Cal are all problematic because they treat God as an object of rational argument rather than as a Person with whom Sarah and Murali need to have a relationship. Martina would focus on relating to them as individuals rather than refuting their arguments. She would get to know them and try to help them see the personal issues underlying their questions and objections. For example, she might try to lead Sarah to realize that she was already questioning God before her philosophy professor gave her intellectual ammunition against Christianity. Was it God that seemed uncaring, or some Christians she knew? Martina would likely emphasize that God’s compassion and love are far greater than any sentimentalism human beings may express. God really wants our good, even when that good can be achieved only through suffering. Martina might ask Murali why, if he thinks all religions are good ways to the same goal, he doesn’t seem to be following any of them seriously. The one thing that nearly every religion insists is necessary is a deep personal commitment, and Murali doesn’t have that. Martina might challenge him to examine the different religions with the question, to which one can he commit himself wholly? For herself, Martina would likely say, she refuses to make an absolute commitment to any philosophy or religion. God—not just the idea of God, but the personal God who speaks and acts and loves us in Jesus—is alone worthy of our absolute commitment and trust.

Issues in Apologetics

These four approaches to apologetics differ in many ways. In this book we will focus on a dozen critical issues that represent in a systematic way the full range of issues facing the apologist.6 These issues are divided into two groups of six issues each. The first group deals with metapologetic issues—foundational questions about the stance apologetics should take toward human knowledge and experience. The second group deals with apologetic issues—the most common questions or objections that non-Christians (or Christians dealing with doubt or confusion) raise to the Christian truth claim.

Metapologetic Questions

Apologetics is a discipline that seeks to defend the Christian view of God, the world, and human life. As such, it relates comprehensively to every area of human knowledge and thought. Apologists understand these relations differently. These differences are typified in the stance taken by apologists toward the following six questions.

1. On what basis do we argue that Christianity is the truth?

On the basis of what understanding of knowledge and truth should the Christian apologist seek to lead non-Christians to the knowledge of Christianity as the truth? As we have seen, this question is at the core of what distinguishes the four approaches discussed in this book. The classical apologist sees reason as the ground of apologetic argument. The evidentialist seeks to build a case for Christianity from the facts. The Reformed apologist contends that God’s revelation of himself in Jesus Christ and in Scripture is the proper ground for all thinking about reason, fact, and human experience. The fideist presents experience of God in Jesus Christ as self-justifying apart from argument. These varying approaches are based on different epistemologies, or theories of knowledge. (Epistemology is concerned with the nature and ground of knowledge—what knowledge is, and how we know what we know—and especially with the justification of knowledge claims.) Thus the classical apologist adheres to a broadly rationalist epistemology, the evidentialist to an empirical or fact-based epistemology, the Reformed apologist to an authoritarian epistemology (with Christ and Scripture the supreme authorities), and the fideist to a subjectivist, experience-based epistemology. Tied up with these epistemologies are varying beliefs about the kind of certainty that can be afforded through apologetic argumentation, the existence and identity of “common ground” or relevant shared truth between Christians and non-Christians, and the relation between faith and reason.

This metapologetic question also relates directly to an apologetic question. Non-Christians object to the absolute truth-claim made by Christians on behalf of the gospel. Most people in our society today do not believe in absolute truth and consider any absolute religious claims particularly onerous. The rise of postmodernism represents the newest wave of assaults on the belief in absolute truth. The responses to this question from the four apologetic approaches will naturally parallel their answers to the question in its metapologetic form. Thus the classical apologist will argue that denials of absolute truth are irrational. The evidentialist will typically argue that while absolute rational certainty for the claims of Christ is unavailable, those claims can be supported by the facts, perhaps beyond reasonable doubt. The Reformed apologist will commonly contend that all people at bottom do believe in absolute truth and even presuppose that belief at every turn. The fideist will generally respond that absolute truth is not a matter of propositional knowledge or factual information anyway, but is a Person who is known in relationship, not in mere words. Fideists are more likely than advocates of other apologetic approaches to find value or points of contact in postmodernism, since that movement eschews the modernist assumption of scientific and rational objectivity and views belief systems primarily as functions of the individual and the community.

2. What is the relationship between apologetics and theology?

This relationship is a primary issue in metapologetics, though its importance is often overlooked. This question is important in two ways.

First, there is significant debate concerning the theological foundation of apologetics. To some extent apologetical methods are related to the way one understands and interprets Christian theology. The close relationship between theology and apologetics is especially evident in Reformed apologetics, because it originated from and is almost completely tied into the Reformed tradition in systematic theology. On the other hand, some Reformed theologians engage in rational and evidential apologetics, although those we are calling Reformed apologists regard these thinkers as inconsistent Calvinists who have slipped into a Thomistic or Arminian apologetic methodology. Thus one cannot avoid theology when considering how to do apologetics. Apologists disagree, for example, about whether God’s revelation in nature can be sufficiently understood by non-Christians to arrive at belief in God. This disagreement is closely tied to a debate over the effects of sin on human reasoning.

Second, apologists hold different views about the relationship of apologetics as a discipline to the discipline of theology (particularly systematic theology). Some apologists view apologetics as a branch of theology (whether major or minor), while others regard it as a preparation for theology. The debate is significant because it affects our understanding of the rules or methods followed in apologetics as well as the purpose and scope of apologetics.

3. Should apologetics engage in a philosophical defense of the Christian faith?

Apologetics is often viewed and practiced almost as if it were synonymous with philosophy of religion—as a discipline that seeks to apply the tools of philosophy to defining and proving certain key beliefs of Christianity. On the other hand, some apologists show great disdain for philosophy, regarding it as the enemy of Christian faith. Historically, some apologists have sought to defend Christianity in terms drawn from the non-Christian philosophies of such thinkers as Plato or Aristotle or Kant. Meanwhile other apologists have regarded such efforts as inevitably compromising the Christian message that is supposedly being defended. This issue must be considered in developing an approach to apologetics.

4. Can science be used to defend the Christian faith?

For many non-Christians today, science poses the most formidable intellectual objections to Christian faith. Yet Christian apologists differ markedly in their view of the proper stance to be taken toward science. Some embrace the findings of science enthusiastically, claiming to find in them direct confirmation of the Christian faith. Others take the opposite position, viewing science in general with suspicion and regarding certain prevailing theories of science as inimical to the Christian faith. Still other apologists view science as irrelevant, since to them the Christian faith deals with issues that transcend the physical world that is the field of scientific inquiry.

5. Can the Christian faith be supported by historical inquiry?

The diversity of views on science among apologists is paralleled by a similar diversity concerning history. Some apologists stake the truth of the Christian message on its historical verifiability. Others, while agreeing that the faith is based on historical events, place little emphasis on historical inquiry or warn against believing that the central events of redemption can be verified “objectively” according to the canons of historical study. Still others regard the faith as in principle not subject to historical inquiry because it deals with the eternal, not the temporal.

6. How is our knowledge of Christian truth related to our experience?

All human beings process new information and ideas by relating them in some fashion to their own experiences in life. This fact necessitates giving some consideration to how apologetics should relate to experience. Some apologists seek to analyze human experience in terms of universal truths in which the Christian message can be grounded. Others eschew argumentation about experience and instead call on non-Christians to experience God’s love in Christ. Still others view all experience as untrustworthy and argue that it needs to be tested and interpreted in light of the authoritative teaching of Scripture. Some answer to the question of experience must be given, or at least assumed, by every apologist.

How each of the four apologetic approaches answers these six metapologetic questions, and how these answers may be integrated, will be considered in the second chapter of each of the remaining parts of this book (chapters 5, 9, 13, 17, and 21).

Apologetic Questions

In the preface we introduced six common questions or objections to the Christian faith that are commonly brought up by non-Christians. We will comment briefly on each.

1. Why should we believe in the Bible?

All Christian apologists have as part of their “job description” the task of persuading people to accept the Bible as God’s word—as inspired Scripture. Apologists take different approaches to accomplishing this task. Some see the question of the Bible as the conclusion or end point of their apologetic. Typically they seek to demonstrate logically the truth of the biblical worldview, then to defend the truth of the central biblical claims on behalf of Jesus Christ, and only then to present the Bible as God’s word. Other apologists defend the truth and inspiration of the Bible inductively, by treating the Bible as a source and defending the authenticity and accuracy of that source in every major aspect. In contrast to these approaches, some apologists insist that the divine authority of the Bible must be presented as the only viable foundation for all knowledge; for them the inspiration of Scripture is the beginning, not the end, of the argument. Still other apologists focus not on defending the doctrine of biblical inspiration but on leading non-Christians to encounter Jesus Christ personally through the reading of Scripture.

2. Don’t all religions lead to God?

On the assumption that (absolute) truth claims in religion are unjustifiable, many people today argue that all religions are adequate to meet the needs that Christianity does. Apologists employing different methods tend to respond to this belief in different ways. Some try to show that all non-Christian religions are illogical. Others present evidence to support Christianity’s unique status among the religions of the world. Still others cut through the objection by responding that Christianity isn’t a religion at all.

3. How do we know that God exists?

All Christian apologists, of course, are concerned to bring non-Christians to the knowledge of God. However, they differ markedly in what sorts of arguments they regard as viable means of convincing non-Christians that God even exists. Some apologists employ arguments designed to prove conclusively that God exists, while others use arguments claiming only to show that it is not unreasonable to believe that God exists. Still others are critical of traditional arguments for God’s existence, preferring either an indirect argument or no argument at all. Some apologists, in fact, assert that arguments for God’s existence can actually interfere with or impede genuine faith.

4. If God does exist, why does he permit evil?

Ask ten non-Christians at random to give two objections to the Christian faith, and very likely nine of them will mention what is known as the problem of evil: How is it that there is evil in the world created by an all-powerful and all-loving God? Christian apologists respond to this challenge with different argumentative strategies. Some argue for the coherence of the Christian worldview as inclusive of evil and suffering. Others contend that the question is impudent and cannot be rationally answered. As this is probably the number one objection to the Christian faith, apologists must wrestle seriously with this question.

5. Aren’t the miracles of the Bible spiritual myths or legends and not literal fact?

Modern criticism of the Bible has resulted in the widespread belief that the books of the Bible were in general not written when or by whom they have traditionally been understood to have been written. Worse, it is commonly believed that the narratives of the Bible are not historical accounts but later myths or legends that have only tenuous roots in fact. In particular, many people today view the biblical accounts of such foundational miraculous events as the crossing of the Red Sea in the Exodus or the resurrection of Jesus from the dead as symbolic myths teaching perennial spiritual truths rather than as miraculous historical events. Christian apologists approach the biblical miracles in different ways. Some seek to make them credible by first proving the existence of God. Others appeal directly to the historical evidence to show that these events occurred, and actually cite the biblical miracles as evidence of God’s existence. Others, though, view miracles as God’s activity in the world in response to faith and criticize traditional apologetic arguments as seeking to base faith on miracles. Once again, apologists who agree that the biblical miracles occurred have markedly different approaches to defending belief in those miracles.

6. Why should I believe what Christians claim about Jesus?

Most non-Christians are willing to grant that belief in Jesus can be helpful or meaningful to Christians, but balk at the claim that belief in Jesus is necessary for all people because what Christians believe about Jesus is the truth. In addition, many non-Christians today believe that biblical scholarship has called into question the traditional Christian view of Jesus as the supernatural, risen Savior and Lord. Apologists employ a variety of arguments designed to lead non-Christians to see and accept the truth claims of Jesus. Some reason that Jesus must be what the Bible says he is because no other explanation makes sense. Others present factual evidence for the life, the death, and especially the resurrection of Jesus, maintaining that it is sufficient to refute modern antibiblical theories about Jesus and to establish the Christian truth claims about him. Still other apologists argue, in effect, that Jesus himself is his own best argument: that non-Christians need simply to be confronted with the person of Jesus in the Gospels. They recognize that biblical scholarship does not deliver to us the traditional, biblical Christ, but contend that it could not and indeed should not do so: the Christ of faith transcends the “Jesus of history” and must be found by faith, not by historical inquiry. Thus, on so basic a question as why non-Christians should believe in Jesus, Christian apologists have offered some strikingly different answers.

How each of the four apologetic approaches answers the six apologetic questions raised here, and how these answers may be integrated, will be considered in the third chapter of each of the remaining parts of this book (chapters 6, 10, 14, 18, and 22).

For Further Reading

Cowan, Steven B., ed. Five Views on Apologetics. Counterpoint series. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000. This book contains contributions by William Lane Craig (“The Classical Model”), Gary R. Habermas (“The Evidential Model”), John M. Frame (“The Presuppositional Model”), Kelly James Clark (“The Reformed Epistemology Model”), and Paul D. Feinberg (“The Cumulative Case Model”). The models of Habermas and Feinberg are variations of what we are calling evidentialism, while the models of Frame and Clark are variations of what we are calling Reformed apologetics.

Geisler, Norman L. Christian Apologetics. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1976. See Part One, “Methodology” (13-147), for a classical apologist’s survey of different theories of knowledge as they relate to apologetic method.

Ramm, Bernard. Varieties of Christian Apologetics: An Introduction to the Christian Philosophy of Religion. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1962. Profiles the life and thought of three thinkers each for three types of systems, stressing subjective immediacy (Pascal, Kierkegaard, Brunner), natural theology (Aquinas, Butler, Tennant), and revelation (Augustine, Calvin, Kuyper). (Ramm’s second type includes what we are calling both classical and evidentialist apologetics.) The first edition, entitled Types of Apologetic Systems (Wheaton, Ill.: Van Kampen Press, 1953), included chapters on Van Til and Carnell instead of Calvin and Kuyper.

See Appendix for more detailed discussion of the books by Cowan, Lewis, and Ramm.

5The usual name for the most popular form of Reformed apologetics is presuppositionalism, a term that has been used for the apologetic systems developed by Cornelius Van Til and Gordon H. Clark. However, the Reformed apologetical tradition is broader than Clark and Van Til. In particular, the apologetic thought of Alvin Plantinga would not properly be termed a form of presuppositionalism. Hence, we have chosen to use the broader term.

5. Classical Apologetics: It Stands to Reason

Apologists Who Emphasize Reason

The classical apologetical tradition, as the term classical suggests, is the dominant approach to apologetics in church history, especially prior to the modern period. It emphasizes the presentation of Christianity as rational—as logically coherent and supportable by sound arguments—and offers what its advocates consider proofs of various types (though especially philosophical proofs) for the existence of God as a first step in defending the truth claims of the Christian faith. As we are using the term in this book, ‘classical apologetics’ also refers to an idealized type that is more or less fully exemplified in apologists in that tradition. Of necessity, then, we will be offering generalizations; that is, what we say about apologetics of this idealized type or approach is generally applicable to apologists in the classical tradition, but one must allow for considerable variations and exceptions. One other qualification needs to be made: as a distinct approach and explicit methodological stance, classical apologetics, like the other three basic approaches discussed in this book, is actually a modern development.

In this chapter we will examine the roots of classical apologetics and consider briefly the thought of five modern classical apologists, among whom is Norman L. Geisler, who represents perhaps the “purest” form of this approach.

Historical Roots of Classical Apologetics

Classical apologetics, more than the other three systems discussed in this book, draws on the apologetic thought of Christian theologians and philosophers throughout church history. Indeed, most advocates of the classical approach count it an important point in their favor that their approach is in line with the major apologists from the early and medieval church. The authors of the book Classical Apologetics, for example, assert with regard to “the classic Christian view” that “theistic proofs” are a valid part of apologetics, “From the Apologists to the dawn of our own era, this has been the central teaching of the church, Eastern, Roman, Protestant, the teaching of the creeds and of the theologians.”1 Although this claim is arguably overstated, there is a significant tradition of Christian apologetics throughout church history in which theistic proofs played a major role. Since we have already given a fairly detailed survey of the history of apologetics in chapter 2, we will review that history only very briefly here.

The classical apologists lay great emphasis on the examples of apologetic argument found in the New Testament (especially Paul’s apologetic speech in Athens in Acts 17). Elements of the classical method were developed by the Apologists of the second century, most notably Justin Martyr. Certain aspects of the apologetic thought of Augustine continued this classical tradition. He made use of philosophical proofs for God’s existence, especially but not exclusively in his earlier writings. To prove that this God had revealed himself in Christ, Augustine cited miracles and fulfilled biblical prophecy and emphasized the dramatic growth and triumph of the church through centuries of persecution and suppression.

It is in the medieval period, though, that the classical approach began to receive systematic formulation. Anselm offered his ontological argument for the existence of God both to edify believers and to challenge and persuade unbelievers. He also presented an argument for the necessity of God becoming man in order to redeem us that proved the point, he claimed, without assuming any knowledge about Christ. Anselm was careful to add that in the end faith was to be placed in God and in his revelation in Scripture, not in Anselm’s arguments. Still, his approach was quite rationally oriented.

Likewise, Thomas Aquinas developed a number of philosophical arguments for the existence of God and expounded Christian teaching on the nature of God in Aristotelian philosophical categories. Thomas rejected Anselm’s ontological argument, preferring various forms of the cosmological argument, but both types of argument are philosophical arguments for theism. Again, Thomas was very careful to say that such philosophical proofs were not the basis of faith or a substitute for faith. According to Thomas, those who rely on philosophical argument alone will never have an adequate knowledge of God. Yet his theistic proofs have often been utilized as a line of defense against atheism, which was not even a serious problem in his day. Thomas’s approach to philosophy (known as Thomism) has inspired many succeeding works of classical apologetics.

While many of the Reformers in the first generation of the Protestant Reformation rejected or denigrated classical apologetic arguments, not all of them did. Philip Melanchthon, in particular, was in his later years more appreciative of classical apologetics than Martin Luther had been, and presented arguments in the Thomistic fashion in the later editions of his Loci communes. Likewise, many Calvinist theologians in the seventeenth century found greater value in philosophical proofs of a classical type than had John Calvin himself. When deism and other forms of skepticism arose in the seventeenth century, Protestants typically answered with arguments rooted in the classical apologetics of Anselm and Aquinas. Natural theology, the construction of arguments defending or proving a theistic worldview on the basis of rational considerations apart from divine revelation, became a regular part of Christian apologetics.

In the nineteenth century the classical theistic proofs were endorsed and utilized by a wide variety of Christian theologians and apologists, including Charles Hodge, whose three-volume Systematic Theology was probably the most influential work of its kind published in nineteenth-century America. In the twentieth century Roman Catholic philosophers, most notably Étienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain, rekindled an interest in Thomistic philosophy, which is probably more popular and influential now than ever before among both Catholic and Protestant apologists.

In the rest of this chapter we will examine in some detail the apologetic contributions of four modern apologists in the classical tradition. Although they have their differences, they all endorse an approach that seeks to offer a rational method of proof (however variously the proofs may be derived) for the Christian position.

B. B. Warfield

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (1851-1921) was a professor of theology at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1871 until the end of his life.2 During that half-century he wrote an impressive array of books and articles in the fields of New Testament criticism and theology, historical theology, and systematic theology.3 Although few of his works would be classified as apologetics per se—in fact, Warfield wrote no book on the subject—virtually all his writings had a strong apologetic purpose and thrust to them. He was the last and arguably the most brilliant representative of the so-called Old Princeton school of theology and apologetics. A few years after he died, Princeton Seminary was reorganized under liberal theological leadership, and the mantle of Old Princeton was taken up by Westminster Theological Seminary in nearby Philadelphia. Westminster was founded by Warfield’s former student and younger colleague at Princeton, J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937).4

What engulfed Princeton shortly after Warfield’s death was in fact the main focus of his apologetic labors throughout his ministry: the rise of liberal theology grounded on an antisupernaturalist approach to the Bible and Christianity. Arguably the primary concern of Warfield’s apologetics was to uphold the supernatural character of Christianity. This meant arguing, first of all, that unless Jesus Christ was a supernatural person, specifically truly God incarnate, and unless he rose supernaturally from the grave, Christianity is simply not true. It is one thing for avowed non-Christians to reject the supernatural; it is another thing entirely for professing Christians to do so. Warfield lamented the fact that many people were rejecting Christianity while clinging to it in name. That people do this is testimony to the significance of Christianity in the world, but it is still misleading.5

Thus, for Warfield a great deal of apologetics was simply explaining why Christianity could not be affirmed or accepted without the supernatural. A naturalistic Christianity is a mere moralism, a philosophy of human self-improvement inspired by the idea of the divine. True Christianity is a religion of redemption, a revelation of the real God’s grace reconciling us and transforming us through faith in Jesus Christ. Although Warfield unabashedly defended Calvinism as the most consistent form of Christianity, in fact the general tenor and focus of his apologetics was supportive of the most basic elements of orthodox Christianity: the truth of the Bible, the deity of Christ, and the virgin birth, sinlessness, miracles, atoning death, and resurrection of Christ.

Part of Warfield’s agenda for reclaiming supernatural Christianity as the only true Christian religion was to show that this is what the Christian church had always believed and its best theologians had always taught. He also wanted to show that the premodern Christian theologians’ belief in the supernatural was not an irrational or blind faith, but one grounded in evidence. In making this case he expressed appreciation for the great apologists in the classical apologetic tradition such as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas (though above all Augustine). He also held in high regard Joseph Butler and William Paley, apologists who paved the way for the evidentialist approach, and Blaise Pascal, whose apologetic in significant ways moved in a fideist direction.6 Although they took apologetics in new directions, these three men were to a great extent consistent with the classical tradition, and thus Warfield could see them as contributing to the development of apologetics as he understood it. He gave considerable attention to showing that the theology of the knowledge of God taught by Augustine and Calvin was consistent with a rational apologetic for the Christian faith.7

According to Warfield, the science of theology takes as its primary data the facts of Scripture. But for theology to be properly grounded, we must know that the Bible is indeed inspired Scripture from God. Ultimately this means that the first principles of theology must be to establish the fact of God’s existence. Warfield distinguished five subdivisions of apologetics based on five subjects. The first three are God, religion, and revelation, by which he means that apologetics “must begin by establishing the existence of God, the capacity of the human mind to know Him, and the accessibility of knowledge concerning Him.”8 From there apologetics must go on “to establish the divine origin of Christianity as the religion of revelation in the special sense of the word,” and finally “to establish the trustworthiness of the Christian Scriptures as the documentation of the revelation of God for the redemption of sinners.”9

Warfield thus advocated a two-step method of defending the Christian faith. First, one establishes the truth of God’s existence and the possibility of knowing God. Second, one shows from the evidence that God is known in his revelation in Christ and in Scripture. Sometimes Warfield subdivides these two steps, as when he writes (with A. A. Hodge), “In dealing with sceptics it is not proper to begin with the evidence which immediately establishes Inspiration, but we should first establish Theism, then the historical credibility of the Scriptures, and then the divine origin of Christianity.”10 The method of first establishing theism (belief in God) before one seeks to establish the truth of Christianity is at the heart of the classical approach to apologetics.

Not everyone agrees that Warfield was a classical apologist. Most notably, Kim Riddlebarger, in his excellent dissertation on Warfield, interprets Warfield as an evidentialist.11 He specifically distinguishing Warfield’s method from that of Norman Geisler (whom we discuss below) or R. C. Sproul and John Gerstner, the lead authors of the book Classical Apologetics.12 His reason for categorizing Warfield as an evidentialist is that the classical theistic proofs play little role in Warfield’s apologetic, although Warfield acknowledged their validity.13 Riddlebarger also shows that Warfield’s defense of the resurrection of Christ as an historical event focused on the evidences.14 (Still, this would be the case with a classical apologist as well as an evidentialist.) His strongest point for classifying Warfield as an evidentialist is Warfield’s contention that a “non-miraculous world-view” might be overturned by the factual evidence for miracles.15 However, Warfield is here focusing on establishing a more robust Christian theism, including miracles, over against a “world-view” such as deism. His argument here is thus compatible with understanding his basic method as the “two-step” classical approach (first show that God exists, then show that God has miraculously revealed himself). In any case, Riddlebarger’s excellent analysis shows that the line between classical and evidentialist apologetics was in practice a blurry one even in Warfield’s day.

For Warfield, apologetics is essentially a theological discipline. Indeed, it occupies a primary place in the theological curriculum. It has the inestimably important task of establishing the fundamental truths and principles on which Christian theology rests. In this sense it might be described as a “pretheological” discipline, but in the broader sense Warfield regarded it as the first of the theological disciplines.

It should be noted, then, that strictly speaking Warfield distinguished apologetics as a formal, theoretical discipline at the head of theology, from what he called apology. Apology is a branch of practical theology and deals with the pragmatic question of how Christians should explain and defend their beliefs when speaking with non-Christians.16

C. S. Lewis

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963), known to his friends as “Jack,” was almost without doubt the most popular Christian apologist internationally in the twentieth century.17 A British scholar of medieval literature who converted to Christianity in midlife, Lewis did not develop a specific apologetic system but approached the claims of Christianity from several directions.18

Having converted from atheism to Christianity, he gave much attention to refuting the philosophical objections to the Christian faith that had bothered him as an atheist.19 Thus the focus of his apologetic writings is to defend the Christian claim that a real, personal, and moral Creator exists to whom we are all accountable and who has intervened in human affairs through miracles, especially the miraculous Person of Jesus Christ. Lewis never tired of emphasizing to skeptics that he was not recommending that they believe in Christ because it would make them happier, but because it was true: “As you perhaps know, I haven’t always been a Christian. I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that.”20

Lewis’s best-known apologetic work, Mere Christianity, was really a combination of three books (The Case for Christianity, Christian Behaviour, and Beyond Personality). In it he refuted atheism, naturalism, and dualism, and presented a case for the unique claims of Christ. A 1993 Christianity Today poll found it far and away the most influential book in readers’ Christian lives, apart from the Bible.21 In its original form as BBC radio talks during World War II, Mere Christianity may actually have contributed in some measure to the Allied victory by encouraging faith and hope among the British people.

Lewis’s apologetic efforts, unlike those of many in the classical tradition, were not limited to rational argument but adopted a variety of genres, reflecting his literary flair. The Pilgrim’s Regress uses allegory to treat many issues in the philosophy of religion.22Surprised by Joy is a biographical apologetic that develops the experience of intense longing for the transcendent.23 Lewis’s three-volume space trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength) and seven-volume Chronicles of Narnia defend the Christian worldview through imagination instead of reason.24 Lewis explained his apologetic purpose by noting that “any amount of theology can now be smuggled into people’s minds under cover of romance without their knowing it.”25 By stripping Christian truths “of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations,” one could sneak past the “watchful dragons” that keep unbelievers from seriously considering those truths.26 Lewis’s humor, wit, and style have thus attracted many non-Christian readers to his books. As Burson and Walls observe, “One should not underestimate the power of style in apologetics, especially in our day. Lewis is an excellent example of how style and substance can work hand in glove to achieve maximum impact.”27 In 1988 over 40 million copies of Lewis’s books were in print.28 No wonder, then, that Time magazine labeled him the twentieth century’s “most-read apologist for God.”29

For the child at heart he created the land of Narnia and the untamed lion/savior, Aslan. For science fiction readers he traveled to Perelandra with Ransom. For the philosopher and theologian he reasoned about pain and miracles, as well as debating doctrines of Christianity and the philosophy of men. For the lover of myth, he wrote an adaptation of the myth of Cupid and Psyche. For the pain stricken he observed grief and spoke of prayer. For those enchanted with rhythm and rhyme he wrote poetry. For those concerned with the afterlife he wrote about Heaven and Hell and exposed the mind of Satan. For the weak and questioning he wrote letters of personal encouragement and advice.30

Lewis’s approach to apologetics defies simple categorization precisely because of the diverse ways in which he sought to display and defend the truth of “mere Christianity.” However, we agree with Norman Geisler and David K. Clark, both of whom classify Lewis as a classical apologist.31 (We will refer to various elements of Lewis’s apologetic in the next two chapters, where we elaborate on the classical apologetic model.) When dealing with outright atheism, Lewis generally offered philosophical arguments for belief in God in preparation for presenting the case for Christianity—though not the specific arguments that most classical apologists prefer. Moreover, toward the end of his career, Lewis found that arguments for belief in God’s existence were not as helpful as he once assumed:

It is very difficult to produce arguments on the popular level for the existence of God. And many of the most popular arguments seem to me invalid. . . .

Fortunately, though very oddly, I have found that people are usually disposed to hear the divinity of Our Lord discussed before going into the existence of God. When I began I used, if I were giving two lectures, to devote the first to mere Theism; but I soon gave up this method because it seemed to arouse little interest. The number of clear and determined atheists is apparently not very large.32

In the above comments, Lewis sounds closer in spirit to the evidentialist approach of launching directly into the factual evidence for Jesus’ divine acts and identity without first trying to make a case for theism.33 One should note, though, Lewis’s explanation for this change in tactic: he did not find it necessary or helpful to argue separately for theism because apparently few of his listeners were dogmatic atheists. The implication is that Lewis would have continued to argue for theism before discussing the evidence for Christianity if the opposition to theism had been more forceful.

Lewis, then, may be broadly described as a classical apologist, with the qualification that (like most apologists) he did not espouse an explicit apologetic method derived from a formal theory of apologetics. Indeed, in his published writings he never discussed apologetic theory. Rather, he employed varying tactics and modes of argument and persuasion in order to address people’s questions, doubts, and skepticism in interesting and effective ways.

Norman L. Geisler

One Christian apologist who has advocated a formal theory of apologetic method is Norman L. Geisler, whose books on apologetics, philosophy of religion, ethics, and biblical studies have made him a key figure in Christian apologetics. He has authored, co-authored, and edited some sixty books.34 A philosopher by training, Geisler has taught apologetics and theology at several major evangelical seminaries since the late 1950s, and is the president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Matthews, North Carolina, which he co-founded in 1992. He was also a prominent member of the Evangelical Theological Society,35 culminating in his serving as president in 1998.

Although Geisler is evangelical Protestant in his theology, he is a convinced Thomist in his philosophy and apologetics. His approach to apologetics proceeds in two steps.36 First the apologist builds a case for theism by demonstrating how it conforms to rational criteria used to evaluate the truth claims of competing worldviews. Having shown that theism is true according to these criteria, the apologist may then present the evidence for the historical truth claims of Christianity.

Geisler elaborates this two-step method (characteristic of classical apologetics) in a series of “Twelve Points that Show Christianity is True”:

1. Truth about reality is knowable.

2. The opposite of true is false.

3. It is true that the theistic God exists.

4. If God exists, then miracles are possible.

5. Miracles can be used to confirm a message from God (i.e., as an act of God to confirm a word from God).

6. The New Testament is historically reliable.

7. The New Testament says Jesus claimed to be God.

8. Jesus' claim to be God was miraculously confirmed by:a. His fulfillment of many prophecies about Himself;b. His sinless and miraculous life;c. His prediction and accomplishment of His resurrection.

9. Therefore, Jesus is God.

10. Whatever Jesus (who is God) teaches is true.

11. Jesus taught that the Bible is the Word of God.

12. Therefore, it is true that the Bible is the Word of God (and anything opposed to it is false).

Geisler says that this argument “builds the case for Christianity from the ground up”—that is, it begins with undeniable points and proceeds from those to show that Christianity is true.37 The first five points correspond to the first step of the classical argument, while the last seven points correspond to the second step.

Geisler’s two most important works, for our purposes, are his Philosophy of Religion (the second edition of which was co-authored with Winfried Corduan) and Christian Apologetics. In view of his influence in contemporary evangelical apologetics, we will review the argument of both of these books in some detail.

Geisler’s Philosophy of Religion

Geisler divides philosophy of religion into four major divisions, dealing with (1) religious experience, (2) God and reason, (3) religious language, and (4) the problem of evil. We will consider each of these subjects in turn.

Religious experience. The issue dominating the first part of Geisler’s Philosophy of Religion is whether experiences of God or the supernatural can be considered rational. Geisler argues that they can because “the history of mankind, sacred or secular, supports the thesis that by nature man has an irresistible urge to transcend himself” (63-64).38 Nevertheless, he argues that verification is necessary to discern that there really is a God to fulfill the human need for transcendence

God and reason. Such verification can be found in a philosophical theistic proof. In the second section of the book, titled “God and Reason,” Geisler examines the function of theistic proofs and defends a version of the cosmological argument. He maintains that “the theist need not be concerned about showing that God’s nonexistence is inconceivable but only that it is not undeniable. After all, what the theist seeks is not mere rational inconceivability but existential undeniability. That is, the theist seeks a necessary Being, not a necessary Thought at the end of his argument” (100-101). The theistic proof that Geisler regards as fundamental is the cosmological argument, which is based on the principle of causality. He examines three other standard philosophical arguments for God’s existence—the argument from design in nature, the argument from morality, and the ontological argument—and argues that in each case the principle of causality is assumed. If this principle is accepted, Geisler maintains, each of these three arguments will depend on a causal form of the cosmological argument.

Religious language. The third part of Geisler’s book focuses on the problem of religious language. Even if a sound argument for the existence of God can be made, how can we intelligently speak about that which transcends all our experience? Geisler maintains that every negation implies a prior affirmation, and that therefore purely negative God-talk is meaningless. The positive knowledge of God implied by negative God-talk requires that language about God be understood univocally—as having an identity of meaning when referring to both God and creatures—to avoid a descent into religious skepticism. Without such univocal understanding, Geisler (along with the late medieval philosopher Duns Scotus) maintains that we would be using words without really knowing what they meant. On the other hand, Geisler also agrees with Aquinas that God cannot possess perfections in the same way created things possess them.

The problem of evil. In the fourth and final part of Philosophy of Religion, Geisler considers three ways to relate God and evil. The first, atheism, affirms the existence of evil and denies the existence of God. Atheists reason that if God exists, he is not essentially good, since he should destroy all evil but does not. Moreover, God evidently cannot do the best, since this is not the best of all possible worlds. Geisler argues that although God has not yet destroyed evil, he will do so, and in a way that leads to the best possible world. The second alternative is illusionism, the denial of the reality of evil. Geisler points out that illusionism cannot account satisfactorily for the origin of the illusion of evil. The third alternative affirms both God (though not necessarily the biblical God) and evil. Some options in this category, such as dualism, finite godism, and sadism, are incompatible with theism. Geisler raises logical objections to each option and turns to solutions to the problem of evil that are open to theism. After examining the alternatives available to the theistic God, Geisler concludes that “the morally best world is better than a morally good world or than no moral world at all” (354). That this world, despite its temporary degradation due to sin, is the best way to the best world will eventually be confirmed at the end of history in the Final Judgment.

Geisler’s Christian Apologetics

Geisler’s textbook Christian Apologetics is divided into three parts. In the first part he considers how to test competing truth claims. Having chosen a test for truth, he applies it to the major worldviews in the second part and argues that theism—the view that the world was created by a God who is able to perform miracles—is the true worldview. Finally, in the third part he presents evidence in support of the Christian faith.

Apologetic method. Geisler critically evaluates seven methodological approaches to the question of God: agnosticism, rationalism, fideism, experientialism, evidentialism, pragmatism, and combinationalism. He concludes that each of these epistemological methods makes a contribution but is inadequate as a test for truth. In their place he proposes unaffirmability as the test for the falsehood of a worldview and undeniability as the test for the truth of a worldview. Unaffirmability occurs when a statement is directly self-defeating, such as “I cannot express myself in words,” or indirectly self-defeating, such as “I know that one cannot know anything about reality” (142).39 Undeniability applies to statements that are definitional or tautologous, such as “Triangles have three sides,” as well as to statements which are existentially self-confirming, such as “I exist” (143-144). These tests for truth should be compared to the first two points of Geisler’s 12-point argument (truth is knowable and the opposite of true is false).

Theistic apologetics. Using the two tests of unaffirmability and undeniability, Geisler seeks to demonstrate that all nontheistic worldviews are directly or indirectly unaffirmable, and only theism is affirmable and undeniable. He examines several competing worldviews (deism, pantheism, panentheism, atheism) and argues that all of them fail the test for truth. For example, deism is a self-defeating position because it acknowledges the miracle of an ex nihilo creation but denies that other miracles are possible. Pantheism is self-defeating because it involves a person (the pantheist) claiming that individual finite selves (such as the pantheist) are less than real. Dogmatic atheism, in its insistence that God must not exist because of the reality of evil, must assume God (as the ground of morality) in order to disprove God. By contrast, Geisler develops a revised cosmological argument with undeniable premises (something exists, nothing comes from nothing) “that leads inescapably to the existence of an infinitely perfect and powerful Being beyond this world who is the current sustaining cause of all finite, changing, and contingent beings” (258). This conclusion corresponds to the third point of Geisler’s 12-point apologetic.

Christian apologetics. Having established the validity of the theistic worldview, Geisler then deals with miracles, the role of history and the establishment of the historical reliability of the New Testament, the deity and authority of Jesus Christ, and finally the inspiration and authority of the Bible. Since he is shifting from judging between worldviews to judging within the theistic worldview (that is, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism), he moves away from the criteria of unaffirmability and undeniability to the probabilistic criterion of systematic consistency (comprehensiveness, adequacy, consistency, coherence). Geisler argues that given the truth of theism, one must acknowledge the possibility of miracles (the fourth point of Geisler’s 12-point apologetic). Furthermore, the existence of God guarantees that history has meaning and that it is possible for human beings to know historical events. This means that God could use miracles in history to confirm his message (the fifth point). From these premises Geisler proceeds to examine the case for Christianity. He argues that the New Testament writings may be regarded as authentic and reliable (point #6), and then applies the methods of historical investigation to those documents to show that Jesus Christ claimed to be God (point #7) and that he vindicated this claim by fulfilling Old Testament prophecies and rising from the dead (point #8). The most systematically consistent interpretation of these facts is that Christ was, in truth, the Son of God (point #9). On the basis of Christ’s divine authority, then, Christians believe the Bible to be the word of God (264-265; compare points #10-12).

Peter Kreeft

Peter Kreeft is a Roman Catholic professor of philosophy at Boston College. He has written numerous books and has emerged as a Christian apologist whose works are popular among Protestants as well as Catholics.40

Even more so than Geisler, Kreeft models his approach on the work of Thomas Aquinas. Kreeft edited and annotated one of the best digests of Aquinas’s major work, the Summa Theologica,41 and in his Handbook of Christian Apologetics, co-authored with Ronald K. Tacelli, he self-consciously modeled his method on that of Aquinas. In fact, they “even thought of titling it Summa Apologetica” (12).42 The book is divided into chapters dealing with broadly defined issues (e.g., God, evil, the Resurrection, the Bible), and each issue is subdivided into more specific questions or problems. In turn each question can, they say, be broken down into seven parts, though for the sake of readability they do not cover all seven for each question. The seven parts are as follows (20):

1. Definition of terms and the meaning of the question

2. The importance of the question, the difference it makes

3. Objections to the Christian answer to the question

4. Answers to each of these objections

5. Arguments for the Christian answer from premises accepted by the unbeliever as well as the believer

6. Objections to these arguments

7. Answers to each of these objections

The crux of this method is found in the fifth part, in which the apologist presents arguments for the Christian position “from premises accepted by the unbeliever as well as the believer.” The arguments thus function as proofs that should be acceptable to unbelievers if they are constructed properly and if the unbelievers reason properly. “The arguments in this book demonstrate that the essential Christian doctrines are true, unless they are bad arguments; that is, ambiguous, false or fallacious.” Not all the arguments have conclusive demonstrative force, though; some are “probable” and function more as “clues” that gain persuasive force when “considered cumulatively” (18).

Although for Kreeft apologetics at its core offers positive arguments as proofs (both demonstrable and probable) for the Christian position, most apologetic argumentation is taken up with answering objections to these proofs or other objections to the Christian faith (parts 3-4, 6-7 above). Following Aquinas, Kreeft is confident that “every possible argument against every Christian doctrine has a rational mistake in it somewhere, and therefore can be answered by reason alone” (39).

Kreeft’s approach is well illustrated by his handling of arguments for the existence of God. He admits that some people do not personally need proofs of God’s existence in order to believe in him, but he points out that the arguments can help others take belief in God seriously. Moreover, Kreeft and Tacelli acknowledge at the outset that their arguments for God’s existence differ in demonstrative power. For example, arguments from miracles or religious experience “claim only strong probability, not demonstrative certainty,” and were included “because they form part of a strong cumulative case.” They believe the arguments with the most demonstrative certainty are the cosmological arguments based on Aquinas’s “five ways,” but these proofs “are not the simplest of the arguments, and therefore are not the most convincing to most people” (49). In the end they offer twenty distinct arguments for God’s existence; while not depending too heavily on any one argument, the authors express confidence that “all twenty together, like twined rope, make a very strong case” (50). These references to a “cumulative case” in which multiple arguments work together “like twined rope” are actually more characteristic of the evidentialist approach to apologetics. This should not be surprising, since many apologists today freely utilize different sorts of arguments. Still, the overall approach that Kreeft and Tacelli take in their book follows the classical model: first argue for the theistic worldview, then argue more specifically for the truth of the Christian revelation.

While the rational structure of his apologetic is especially rooted in Thomistic philosophy, Kreeft is greatly indebted to C. S. Lewis for the practical expression of much of his approach.43 Kreeft and Tacelli conclude their Handbook by reprinting the essay “Man or Rabbit?” which “we think is the most effective essay written by the most effective Christian apologist of our century, C. S. Lewis” (388).44 Kreeft is perhaps best known for his books in which various characters, some fictional and some historical, engage in dialogue about ethical, philosophical, and religious questions. In one of these, Between Heaven and Hell, he imagines a discussion between C. S. Lewis, who represents Kreeft’s Christian position, and two men who happened to die on the same day as Lewis (22 November 1963)—John F. Kennedy, representing the modernist or humanist tradition, and Aldous Huxley, representing the mystical or pantheist tradition. Early in the dialogue Lewis and Kennedy discuss the grounds of Lewis’s faith in Christ:

Kennedy: If you want to be so logical, I challenge you: prove to me logically that Jesus is God and not just man.

Lewis: All right.

Kennedy: What?

Lewis: I just said, “All right.” Why the surprise?

Kennedy: I thought you were going to say something about mysteries and faith and authority and the church. Do you mean you are going to try to reason yourself into the old faith?

Lewis: Not myself; I’m already there. But you, perhaps.

Kennedy: Did you reason yourself into it? Did you arrive at your belief by reason alone?

Lewis: Reason alone? Of course not. But I looked before I leaped. I reasoned before I believed. And after I believed too—I mean, once I believed, I was convinced by the way reason backed up faith. It couldn’t prove everything, but it could give strong arguments for many things, and it could answer all objections.

Kennedy:All objections?

Lewis: Certainly.

Kennedy: That sounds pretty arrogant to me. Who are you to answer all objections?

Lewis: No, no, I don’t claim that I can answer all objections but that reason can—that all objections are answerable.

Kennedy: Why do you believe that?

Lewis: If truth is one, if God is the author of all truth, both the truth of reason and the truth of faith (I mean divine revelation), then there can never be a rational argument against faith that’s telling, that’s unanswerable. Faith may go beyond reason but it can never simply contradict reason.45

William Lane Craig

William Lane Craig’s work has put him at the forefront of evangelical apologetics in the early twenty-first century. The scholarly depth and range of his work and his effectiveness as an apologist are very impressive. Most academics make their mark in only one field, and as specialization increases, that field tends to be ever narrower. Craig is one of the leading evangelical theorists in at least three areas of academic research. The first is the cosmological argument, an approach to proving God’s existence that Craig has developed along both philosophical and scientific lines, both with great sophistication.46 Craig is also widely viewed as one of the leading evangelical scholars in the historical argument for the resurrection of Jesus, an extremely well plowed field that has produced new fruit through Craig’s efforts.47 Yet a third area in which Craig is a leading evangelical researcher is the philosophical analysis of the attributes of God. Craig has given special attention to the doctrine of God’s omniscience, defending an orthodox (though frankly Arminian48) theological understanding of this doctrine with a rigorous and fresh approach.49 Craig has also published extensively on the question of God’s relation to time.50

Besides writing both technical and popular books defending these three aspects of Christian faith, William Lane Craig has written one of the best recent textbook introductions to the subject of apologetics51 and co-authored a major textbook on Christian philosophy.52 In addition, he has publicly debated atheists and skeptics widely, with great success. Some of these debates have been published,53 most notably his 1997 debate on the Resurrection with radical New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan54 and his 1998 debate with renowned atheist philosopher Antony Flew.55 Craig’s debate with Flew was held on the fiftieth anniversary of the famous 1948 BBC radio debate between Fredrick Copleston and Bertrand Russell. A few years later, in 2004, Flew abandoned atheism, announcing that he had concluded that some sort of God exists, although he still did not accept the Christian view of God.56

In most of his earlier works Craig did not identify himself as an advocate of any particular apologetic methodology. However, in 2000 Craig defended the classical model in a book on different apologetic methods.57 That he is a classical apologist may also be seen in his apologetics textbook and in some of his more wide-ranging debates, where he follows a fairly traditional, classical pattern. He opens by presenting arguments for the existence of God and follows these with arguments for the truth of Christianity (based mainly on the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection and deity). Still, some of Craig’s arguments have been extremely influential in evidentialist apologetics. Here we will present an overview of his textbook on apologetics, Reasonable Faith.

Craig begins by exploring the question, “How do I know Christianity is true?” According to Craig, the key to answering this question is “to distinguish between knowing Christianity to be true and showing Christianity to be true” (31).58 “We know Christianity is true primarily by the self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit. We show Christianity is true by demonstrating that it is systematically consistent” (48). In other words, Christian apologetics does not pretend to create the grounds for knowing that Christianity is true, but rather points to or presents Christianity as rational as a means of encouraging unbelievers to receive the witness of the Spirit.

Rather than launching immediately into arguments for God’s existence, Craig begins his apologetic by showing “the absurdity of life without God” (chapter 2). This argument is not intended to prove that Christianity is true, but to show “the disastrous consequences for human existence, society, and culture if Christianity should be false” (51). “If God does not exist, then life is futile. If the God of the Bible does exist, then life is meaningful. Only the second of these two alternatives enables us to live happily and consistently. Therefore, it seems to me that even if the evidence for these two options were absolutely equal, a rational person ought to choose biblical Christianity” (72).

Given that God’s existence would give meaning to life, we do not believe in God in an irrational attempt to convince ourselves that life has meaning. We believe in God because there is proof that he exists. “Thus, people are without excuse for not believing in God’s existence, not only because of the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit, but also because of the external witness of nature” (77). Arguments in support of belief in God “provide an intellectual, cultural context in which the gospel cannot be dismissed simply as a logical absurdity and is therefore given an honest chance to be heard” (78). Craig surveys the traditional arguments for God’s existence, including the ontological, cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments, and finds “quite a number of the proffered theistic arguments to be sound and persuasive and together to constitute a powerful cumulative case for the existence of God” (91-92). Craig’s favorite theistic argument is the kalām cosmological argument, which was originally formulated by medieval Arabic Muslim philosophers. Craig concludes that, “amazing as it may seem, the most plausible answer to the question of why something exists rather than nothing is that God exists. This means, in turn, that the first and most fundamental condition for meaning to life and the universe is supplied” (121-122).

In chapter 4 Craig defends the possibility of miracles. He concludes that the philosophical objections from such thinkers as Spinoza and Hume are without merit. His final words on the subject indicate that for him the reasonableness of belief in miracles rests on the reasonableness of belief in God: “Once the non-Christian understands who God is, then the problem of miracles should cease to be a problem for him” (155). This line of reasoning is characteristic of the classical approach, which rests belief in the possibility of miracles on belief in God.

In chapter 5 he considers the question of the possibility of historical knowledge as a prelude to the examination of the historical claims of the New Testament concerning Jesus Christ. Here the major error to be combated is historical relativism, the belief that our distance from the past and our lack of neutrality or objectivity makes it impossible for us to know what actually occurred in the past (169-172). In answer to the objection that we lack direct access to the past, Craig argues that we may test theories about the past using the same criterion of systematic consistency that we use in other matters of truth. “The historian should accept the hypothesis that best explains all the evidence” (184). To the objection that objectivity in historical knowledge is impossible, Craig points out that our ability to distinguish history from propaganda and to criticize poor history reveals our ability to access genuine historical facts (185-187).

Craig L. Blomberg, an evangelical New Testament scholar, wrote chapter 6, on “the historical reliability of the New Testament,” to document that it is “probable that a substantial majority of the details in the gospels and Acts do describe what Jesus and the apostles actually said and did” (226). In chapter 7 William Lane Craig turns the discussion directly to Jesus’ claims about himself as reported in the Gospels. “At the center of any Christian apologetic must stand the person of Christ; and very important for the doctrine of Christ’s person are the personal claims of the historical Jesus” (233). Craig admits “that the majority of NT scholars today do not believe that the historical Jesus ever claimed to be the Son of God, Lord, and so forth” (243). But while Jesus’ use of these titles for himself is widely questioned, the self-understanding they express can be clearly traced back to Jesus himself in the rest of what he said about himself (244). Suppose we take only the sayings of Jesus admitted by the extremely liberal “Jesus Seminar” to be authentic. Even these sayings show Jesus as someone who “thought of himself as being the Son of God in a unique sense,” who “claimed to speak and act with divine authority” and to be “able to perform miracles,” and who “claimed to determine people’s eternal destiny before God” (244-252). Radical critics refuse to draw the obvious conclusion—that Jesus claimed to be God—not because of a lack of evidence but because of their prejudice against the Christian doctrine (253).

The importance of Jesus’ claims to deity is that they “provide the religio-historical context in which the resurrection becomes significant, as it confirms those claims” (253). This leads Craig to the capstone of his apologetic, the historical argument for the resurrection of Jesus (chapter 8).

The case for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus seems to me to rest upon the evidence for three great, independently established facts: the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the origin of the Christian faith. If these three facts can be established and no plausible natural explanation can account for them, then one is justified in inferring Jesus’ resurrection as the most plausible explanation of the data. (272)

The structure of Craig’s apologetic closely parallels that of Norman Geisler, with some minor differences. Both begin by considering matters of epistemology and then move to defend the existence of God, primarily on the basis of a form of the cosmological argument. (Craig uses a version of the kalām argument originated by medieval Muslim philosophers, while Geisler uses a form of the cosmological argument dependent on the medieval Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas.) Having established the credibility of belief in God’s existence, both apologists argue for the possibility of miracles and then for the possibility of historical knowledge of such miracles. They then move to specifically Christian claims, making the case for the reliability of the New Testament, from there to Jesus’ claims to deity and the evidence for his resurrection, and conclude that Jesus’ resurrection confirms his claims to deity and therefore the truth of all that Jesus taught.

In the conclusion to his book, Craig presents “the ultimate apologetic,” which he says “will help you to win more persons to Christ than all the other arguments in your apologetic arsenal put together” (299). This ultimate apologetic is to show people our love for God and our love for one another (299-301). “This, then, is the ultimate apologetic. For the ultimate apologetic is: your life” (302).

Conclusion

Although the five apologists profiled in this chapter are all identified with the classical apologetical tradition pioneered by Thomas Aquinas, some distinct differences among them should not be overlooked. Norman Geisler is perhaps the most unremittingly rationalist of the five, by which we mean that deductive logic plays the most comprehensive role in his apologetic. Even Geisler, however, is not a thoroughgoing rationalist.

Peter Kreeft’s and William Lane Craig’s methods differ somewhat from that of Geisler. While upholding the rational ideal of deductive proof for theism, Kreeft and Craig also draw on a wide variety of arguments that fall short of deductive proof and employ them in defense both of theism and of Christianity per se in cumulative-case arguments. Thus these two apologists show some affinities for the evidentialist approach that defends theism using inductive, empirical evidences. What makes their method classical is that they follow the pattern of defending theism as a worldview within which the historical evidences for Christianity (miracles, fulfilled prophecy) are to be considered. In this respect, as we have just seen, Craig’s apologetic follows essentially the same structure as Geisler’s.

B. B. Warfield, writing at the beginning of the rise of the Reformed apologetic tradition, articulated a fairly traditional, classical apologetic. Yet Warfield, who was himself a Calvinist, anticipated in certain respects the Reformed apologetic of Cornelius Van Til. He regarded theistic arguments as reminders of the immediate awareness of recognition of God that all human beings have because of their creation in the image of God. His affirmation that the facts of Christianity are also Christian doctrines anticipated Van Til’s teaching that all facts are interpreted facts. Warfield’s apologetic also has affinities with the evidentialist approach, notably in his view that evidence for miracles could be in some sense part of the case for God’s existence.

Finally, C. S. Lewis’s apologetic, while broadly fitting the classical approach, also had affinities with other approaches. Lewis’s stock method was to argue first for God’s existence and then for Christianity, but in later years he often found it prudent to start immediately with the evidence for Christ’s deity. In this respect his later method was similar to that of evidentialism (although his reason for not arguing for theism first was that he found it largely unnecessary). Lewis also showed the sensitivity to personal, relational concerns that characterizes the fideist approach. For him apologetics was a function of the whole human person, dealing as much with the imagination as with the intellect, and ultimately was concerned with the personal reality of Christ himself.

In the following chapters, we will examine the classical approach in greater detail, drawing on the writings of these five classical apologists and other modern apologists who follow in that tradition.

For Further Study

Hackett, Stuart C. The Reconstruction of the Christian Revelation Claim: A Philosophical and Critical Apologetic. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984. An apologetics textbook by William Lane Craig’s philosophy professor at seminary, advocating a “rational empirical” theory of knowledge as the basis for a classical defense of Christianity.

Jones, Charles Andrews, III. “Charles Hodge, the Keeper of Orthodoxy: The Method, Purpose and Meaning of His Apologetic.” Ph.D. diss., Drew University, 1989. A dissertation on the apologetic of the premier systematic theologian of Old Princeton.

Moreland, J. P. Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987. An apologetics textbook taking an approach very similar to that of William Lane Craig—generally classical in structure with some evidentialist leanings in content.

Sproul, R. C. Defending Your Faith: An Introduction to Apologetics. Wheaton, Ill.: Good News Publishers—Crossway Books, 2003. Recent text by a popular Reformed theologian and classical apologist in the tradition of Warfield. Sproul discusses the task of apologetics, delineates “four essential principles of knowledge” from which he will make his case (the law of noncontradiction, the law of causality, the reliability of sense perception, and the validity of analogical language for God), presents his argument for God from the existence of the universe, and finishes with the case for the authority of the Bible, relating it to both Jesus’ teaching and the testimony of the Holy Spirit.

18Lewis wrote voluminously, and many of his writings, while not expressly works of apologetics, had an apologetic function or relevance. His most important and directly apologetical works were Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1952); Miracles: A Preliminary Study, 2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1960); The Problem of Pain (New York: Macmillan, 1962); Christian Reflections, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967); and God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970).

19On Lewis’s conversion, see especially David C. Downing, The Most Reluctant Convert: C. S. Lewis’s Journey to Faith (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2002). Even those well read in Lewis will learn much about the context of his thought from this insightful book.

20Lewis, “Answers to Questions on Christianity,” in God in the Dock, 58.

33The evidentialist John Warwick Montgomery, in some comments he made on the first edition of this book, describes Lewis as his “mentor” and expresses incredulity that “C. S. Lewis is put in the same bed with Norman Geisler” (“Editor’s Introduction,” Special Issue: John Warwick Montgomery’s Apologetic, Global Journal of Classical Theology 3, 1 [March 2002], online at < http://www.trinitysem.edu/journal/jwm_intro_v3n1.html >. Of course, there are significant differences between Lewis and Geisler (and no doubt significant similarities between Lewis and Montgomery). Yet the approaches of Lewis and Geisler are sufficiently alike (prove that God exists [if necessary], then present the evidence for Christ) that they may be placed in the same ‘family’ or basic type of apologetics.

34The most important books authored by Geisler alone that are of special importance to apologetics include Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1976); The Roots of Evil (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978); Miracles and Modern Thought (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982); Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999); and Systematic Theology, Volume One: Introduction, Bible (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2002). Geisler has also co-authored numerous books, the most important of which for our purposes are Philosophy of Religion, 2d ed. with Winfried Corduan (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988); with William D. Watkins, Worlds Apart: A Handbook on World Views, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989); with Ronald M. Brooks, When Skeptics Ask: A Handbook of Christian Evidences (Wheaton, Ill.: Victor, 1990); and with Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, Foreword by David Limbaugh (Wheaton, Ill.: Good News Publishers—Crossway Books, 2004). See also To Everyone an Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview: Essays in Honor of Norman L. Geisler, ed. Francis J. Beckwith, William Lane Craig, and J. P. Moreland (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2004).

35In 2003, Geisler resigned his membership in ETS in protest of the society’s retaining Clark Pinnock as a member. According to Geisler, Pinnock’s view of Scripture is incompatible with biblical inerrancy as understood historically in the ETS.

36Very little has been written either positively or negatively about Geisler’s apologetics or his thought generally. One brief article critiquing Geisler’s apologetic method is Richard A. Purdy, “Norman Geisler’s Neo-Thomistic Apologetics,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 25 (1982). A more recent article that critiques the apologetic of Geisler and other classical apologists is Doug Erlandson, “The Resurrection of Thomism,” Antithesis 2, 3 (May/June 1991).

37This 12-point argument is prominently featured in Geisler and Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, and is also developed in a series available in video and audio formats entitled “12 Points that Show Christianity Is True” (http://www.impactapologetics.com/).

38All page references in this section are from Geisler and Corduan, Philosophy of Religion. Since the book was originally authored by Geisler alone, and since our focus here is on Geisler’s apologetic, in the text we refer to the book simply as Geisler’s.

39All references in this section are to Geisler, Christian Apologetics.

47See The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus During the Deist Controversy, Texts and Studies in Religion, vol. 23 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1985); Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity, vol. 16 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989); Knowing the Truth about the Resurrection (Ann Arbor: Servant, 1991).

48Craig argues that God knows all things, including all future events, but in no sense predestines or predetermines the future. This is not a question that will be explored in this book. There are two notable introductions to the most prevalent views within evangelicalism: David Basinger and Randall Basinger, eds., Predestination and Free Will: Four Views, by John Feinberg, Norman Geisler, Bruce Reichenbach, and Clark Pinnock (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986); and another ‘Four Views’ book to which Craig contributed: James K. Beilby and Paul R. Eddy, eds., Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views, by Gregory A. Boyd, David Hunt, William Lane Craig, and Paul Helm (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2001).

53Craig also engaged an atheist philosopher in an extremely technical written debate on the cosmological argument: William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993).

54This debate was published with responses from four biblical scholars: Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? A Debate between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan, moderated by William F. Buckley, Jr., ed. Paul Copan, with responses from Robert J. Miller, Craig L. Blomberg, Marcus Borg, and Ben Witherington III (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998). Crossan is a former co-chair of the ultraliberal “Jesus Seminar.” See also Jesus’ Resurrection: Fact or Figment? A Debate on the Resurrection between William Lane Craig and Gerd Lüdemann, ed. Paul Copan and Ronald Tacelli (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2000).

6. Classical Apologetics: A Reasonable Faith

In the previous chapter we surveyed a number of apologists working in the classical tradition. Although they vary among themselves especially on the extent to which they use deductive or inductive arguments to formulate their apologetic as a whole, all emphasize the importance of showing the theistic worldview to be reasonable in order to present the evidences for the facts of Christianity effectively to nontheists. It is this methodological principle, however differently understood and applied, that typifies the classical apologetic approach. In this chapter we consider how this principle is related to various crucial areas of human knowledge that have an important bearing on the truth claims of Christianity.

Rational Tests for Determining Truth

In the classical approach, there is no substantive conflict between faith and reason. The Christian worldview is a reasonable faith, a step into the light of reason and truth rather than a leap into the darkness of irrationality and subjectivity. To show this reasonableness, classical apologists stress the need to compare and evaluate conflicting worldviews by means of certain epistemological criteria, chief among which is logical consistency or rationality. This does not mean that classical apologists are pure rationalists in their epistemology. All would be quick to acknowledge that rationalism per se (according to which, reason is the sole test of truth) is an inadequate approach to religious knowledge. Rationalism wrongly elevates human reason to the level of an ultimate arbiter of truth. Moreover, because God transcends the universe, the human mind cannot arrive on its own at substantive knowledge about God.

Geisler’s treatment of rationalism is representative of the classical approach. The strength of rationalism, he argues, lies in its stress on the inescapability of the law of noncontradiction, its recognition of the a priori categories of knowledge, and its emphasis on the intelligibility of reality. In spite of these positive features, Geisler maintains that the standard forms of rationalism are deficient because they fail to demonstrate that their first principles are rationally necessary. Logic is an indispensable and excellent negative test for truth—it is very useful in disproving truth claims—but it is insufficient alone as a positive test for truth.1 This does not mean that Geisler does not view logic as a test for truth, but only that logic cannot discover truth alone. He explains why he is not a rationalist as follows:

A rationalist tries to determine all truth by human reason. A reasonable Christian merely uses reason to discover truth that God has revealed, either by general revelation or by special revelation in the Bible.”2

Warfield argued that rationalism erred in insisting that every doctrine of Christianity had to be tested and proved before the bar of reason before any of it could be believed. Reason may examine the truth claims of the Christian religion as a whole, he agreed, but it would be unreasonable to deny that some truths about the transcendent God and his relationship to mankind might be beyond our capacity to prove rationally.

It certainly is not the business of apologetics to take up each tenet of Christianity in turn and seek to establish its truth by a direct appeal to reason. Any attempt to do this, no matter on what philosophical basis the work of demonstration be begun or by what methods it be pursued, would transfer us at once into the atmosphere and betray us into the devious devices of the old vulgar rationalism, the primary fault of which was that it asked for a direct rational demonstration of the truth of each Christian teaching in turn.3

Such comments about the limits of rationality alone should not obscure the primary role that logic or reason plays in classical apologetics. According to Geisler, logic “is the basis of all thought about God.”4 In a statement he was to make repeatedly in his writings, Warfield asserted that “we believe in Christ because it is rational to believe in Him, not even though it be irrational.”5 Indeed, Warfield contends, there cannot be true faith that is not rationally grounded in evidence. The purpose of apologetics is to elucidate these rational grounds. This does not at all mean that people must be able to demonstrate the truth of Christianity in order to be Christians. In fact, people may have faith and be completely at a loss to analyze or explain the grounds of their faith. Yet such rationally explicable grounds must exist, according to classical apologists. Warfield explains:

A man recognizes on sight the face of his friend, or his own handwriting. Ask him how he knows this face to be that of his friend, or this handwriting to be his own, and he is dumb, or, seeking to reply, babbles nonsense. Yet his recognition rests on solid grounds, though he lacks analytical skill to isolate and state these solid grounds. We believe in God and freedom and immortality on good grounds, though we may not be able satisfactorily to analyze these grounds. No true conviction exists without adequate rational grounding in evidence. . . . The Christian’s conviction of the deity of his Lord does not depend for its soundness on the Christian’s ability convincingly to state the grounds of his conviction.6

Although classical apologists do not think the truth of Christianity depends on the strength of their arguments, this does not mean they are dubious about the rational validity of those arguments. Geisler’s own approach, though not a thoroughgoing rationalism, uses arguments based on a dual test for truth that is largely rationalist. Unaffirmability is used as the negative test, while undeniability is the positive test. A statement is unaffirmable if the act of affirming it actually contradicts it (“I cannot utter a single sentence in English”). A statement is undeniable if it is true by definition (“A triangle has three sides”) or if the act of denying it actually affirms it (“It is not true that I exist”).7 According to Geisler, the main problem with a purely rationalistic argument like the ontological argument (which reasons from the idea of an unsurpassably great being to the existence of that being, i.e., God) is that it assumes that something exists:

Of course, if something exists, then the ontological argument takes on new strength; for if something exists it is possible that something necessarily exists. But the point here is that there is no purely logical way to eliminate the “if.” I know undeniably but not with logical necessity that I exist.8

In his main argument for God’s existence—a form of the cosmological argument—Geisler’s only empirically grounded premise is that some changing being or beings exist. The rest of the argument proceeds rationally to reach the conclusion that God exists.9 An argument of this sort is highly rationalistic even though it is not an exercise in pure rationalism.

The rational test of unaffirmability is frequently used in classical apologetics, in particular to show that certain non-Christian philosophies are untenable. One such philosophy is the tradition of relativism and postmodernism that emerged as a potent cultural force in the last decade of the twentieth century. Relativism is the belief that statements of fact or value are true from some perspectives but not from others; in short, all truth is relative. This has been a dominant view of knowledge in much Eastern religion and philosophy, as well as in the New Age movement. Advocates of these belief systems find nothing troubling about affirming flatly contradictory claims. Postmodernism is a cultural movement that has applied relativistic thinking in various fields of thought, including architecture, law, ethics, literature, the arts, philosophy, and even theology. Classical apologists firmly resist relativism in all its forms as a logically incoherent view of knowledge. They point out that a statement of relativism such as “Every point of view is only partial” is self-defeating because, if expressing only a partial point of view, it is not true for all points of view—which means that some points of view are total, not partial. If the statement is said to express the total truth, of course, then the statement becomes an example of the kind of knowledge the statement itself asserts cannot be had.10

While classical apologists use arguments that, if sound, yield certain conclusions, they are often content to conclude simply that belief in God, as well as in Christ, is reasonable. For example, C. S. Lewis argues that at a minimum Christianity must have some rational plausibility; it is not a religion of indifference to reason or evidence. “We know, in fact, that believers are not cut off from unbelievers by any portentous inferiority of intelligence or any perverse refusal to think. Many of them have been people of powerful minds. Many of them have been scientists. We may suppose them to have been mistaken, but we must suppose that their error was at least plausible.”11

Lewis thinks “there is evidence both for and against the Christian propositions which fully rational minds, working honestly, can assess differently. . . . There is no reason to suppose stark unreason on either side. We need only suppose error. One side has estimated the evidence wrongly. And even so, the mistake cannot be supposed to be of a flagrant nature; otherwise the debate would not continue.”12 Likewise, William Lane Craig has explained that he does not attempt to prove that it is necessarily irrational to disbelieve in the Resurrection, but that the Resurrection is the best explanation of the known facts.13

Craig’s view of the relationship between faith and reason merits closer consideration. He has set forth that view most fully in the first chapter of his textbook on apologetics, Reasonable Faith. He begins by surveying the thought of such thinkers as Augustine, Aquinas, John Locke, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and Alvin Plantinga. He then develops his own answer to the question, “How do I know Christianity is true?” The key to answering this question, he says, is “to distinguish between knowing Christianity to be true and showing Christianity to be true” (31).14 He discusses these two issues separately.

First, Craig suggests that “the way we know Christianity to be true is by the self-authenticating witness of God’s Holy Spirit” (31). A person who has this witness from the Holy Spirit “does not need supplementary arguments or evidences” to know that he is having that experience, because it is a direct experience of God and not merely the basis of an argument about God (32). Craig finds this doctrine clearly taught in the New Testament (32-34). “For the believer, God is not the conclusion of a syllogism; he is the living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob dwelling within us” (34). The unbeliever’s problem is not a lack of arguments or evidence but resistance to this witness of the Spirit (35-36). Given this ultimate, grounding role of the witness of the Spirit in our knowledge of the truth of Christianity, “the only role left for argument and evidence to play is a subsidiary role. . . . A person who knows Christianity is true on the basis of the witness of the Spirit may also have a sound apologetic which reinforces or confirms for him the Spirit’s witness, but it does not serve as the basis of his belief” (36). To make apologetic argument the basis of faith “would consign most believers to irrationality” and let people who had not been given good arguments for Christianity off the hook (37).

When it comes to showing that Christianity is true, the roles of the Holy Spirit’s witness and of argument “are somewhat reversed.” Showing that Christianity is true involves presenting “sound and persuasive arguments for Christian truth claims” (38). These arguments may be either deductive or inductive, but in both forms of reasoning “logic and fact are the keys to showing soundly that a conclusion is true” (40). A truth claim that “is logically consistent and fits all the facts known in our experience” passes the test for truth known as systematic consistency.15 This test does not “guarantee the truth of a world view”; it merely shows that worldview to be probably true. This does not undermine the absolute commitment required in faith because while we can only show Christianity to be probably true by argument, we can know Christianity to be true with complete assurance by the Spirit’s witness (40). Moreover, the Holy Spirit can and does use rational argumentation as means through which he brings people to faith (46-47).

Craig recognizes that many people today who espouse some form of Eastern religion or New Age teaching will dismiss his appeal to logical consistency. These belief systems often encourage people to hold contradictory ideas together. Craig finds such ideas “frankly crazy and unintelligible” (41). The claim that logic and other self-evident principles are not universally true “seems to be both self-refuting and arbitrary.” He asks us to consider the claim that “God cannot be described by propositions governed by the Law of Contradiction.” If this statement is true, then it itself expresses a proposition that is not governed by the law of contradiction. But that means that its contrary is also true: God can be described by propositions governed by the law of contradiction (42). Craig then shows that the same problem applies to postmodernism. His own view that the truth about Christ is known ultimately by the witness of the Spirit and not by rationalism might be described as a kind of postmodern view of knowledge. But postmodernists per se claim “that there is no objective truth about reality” (43), and such a claim is again “self-refuting and arbitrary” (44).

Craig concludes by explaining that he finds his approach to faith and reason both liberating for Christians and effective in evangelism:

It is tremendously liberating to be able to know that our faith is true and to commend it as such to an unbeliever without being dependent upon the vagaries of argument and evidence for the assurance that our faith is true; at the same time we know confidently and without embarrassment that our faith is true and that the unbeliever can know this, too, without our falling into relativistic subjectivism. . . . Success in witnessing is simply communicating Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and leaving the results to God. Similarly, effectiveness in apologetics is presenting cogent and persuasive arguments for the Gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit, and leaving the results to God (49, 50).

Although Geisler believes that rational arguments for the truth of God’s existence can be had, he agrees that such apologetic arguments cannot produce faith. “Rational arguments offer proof but do not necessarily persuade unbelievers of God’s existence. They may be objectively correct but not always subjectively convincing. This is because they are directed at the mind but are not directive of the will. They can ‘lead the horse to water,’ but only the Holy Spirit can persuade a person to drink.”16

The Foundation of Theology

Generally speaking, classical apologists understand the purpose of apologetics to be showing the rationality of the foundational truths and principles on which Christian theology is based. As Ronald B. Mayers has explained, this meant that apologetics was often virtually equated with theological prolegomena, notably in Thomism. Mayers himself rejects this equation. He argues that theological prolegomena is a branch of theology that “assumes the truth of the Christian faith” and seeks to clarify its underlying assumptions, while apologetics seeks “to demonstrate the truthfulness of Christianity and the viability of the theologian’s assumptions.”17 One can see, though, that even in Mayers’s view there is a very close relationship between the two disciplines.

Warfield has articulated the classical understanding of the purpose of apologetics as justification of the grounds of theology perhaps more explicitly than anyone:

It is, in other words, the function of apologetics to investigate, explicate, and establish the grounds on which a theology—a science, or systematized knowledge of God—is possible; and on the basis of which every science which has God for its object must rest, if it be a true science whichclaims to a place within the circle of the sciences. It necessarily takes its place, therefore, at the head of the departments of theological science and finds its task in the establishment of the validity of that knowledge of God which forms the subject-matter of these departments. . . .18

Warfield insists that apologetics must be distinguished from apologies and even from the science of apology. The place to study “the theory of apology” and “to teach men how to defend Christianity” is “in practical theology” alongside homiletics and similar disciplines. The science of apology “of course presupposes the complete development of Christianity through the exegetical, historical and systematic disciplines,” and as such should be treated along with polemics and the like as a theological discipline, either systematic or practical.19 But apologetics is a theoretical discipline that seeks to establish the reality of the subject matter with which all theology, including the study of apology, is concerned. “So soon as it is agreed that theology is a scientific discipline and has as its subject-matter the knowledge of God, we must recognize that it must begin by establishing the reality as objective facts of the data upon which it is based.”20

Insofar as the unbeliever is invited to examine the apologetic argument for the truth of the fundamental claims and principles of Christian theology, this view of apologetics has generally been associated with a high view of human reason even after the Fall. Classical apologists do subscribe to the biblical doctrine of the Fall and the resulting effects of sin on human thinking, but they generally argue that human depravity cannot have completely debilitated the capacity of human reason to understand God’s truth. Man is in need of the grace of God to respond to special revelation, but he is capable of understanding general revelation to a considerable extent and can formulate rational arguments to prove the existence of God. Moreover, the non-Christian is capable of understanding that such rational arguments cannot enable him to know God personally, much less savingly, and therefore to recognize that special, redeeming revelation from God is needed.

The crucial point here is that for the classical apologist, theology is a discipline to which people are invited after becoming Christians. Thus he seeks to keep theological questions of controversy among Christians on the back burner in apologetic arguments directed to non-Christians. C. S. Lewis was typical of many classical apologists in that he understood the task of apologetics to be defending the basic message of “mere Christianity” and not arguing for one theological or denominational tradition within Christianity. “Our divisions should never be discussed except in the presence of those who have already come to believe that there is one God and that Jesus Christ is His only Son.”21 Lewis acknowledged that the theological issues that divide Christians may be important, but the apologist as such should not be concerned to press one viewpoint on those issues: “Each of us has his individual emphasis: each holds, in addition to the Faith, many opinions which seem to him to be consistent with it and true and important. And so perhaps they are. But as apologists it is not our business to defend them. We are defending Christianity, not ‘my religion.’”22

The Constructive Use of Philosophy

Norman Geisler’s thinking has been greatly influenced by the work of Aquinas, and his apologetic system reflects a modified version of Thomistic philosophy. Thus he believes that Christian theology is not inimical to philosophy but can be expressed within the context of a metaphysical system. In their textbook on philosophy Geisler and co-author Paul Feinberg assert that “philosophy serves in the construction of the Christian system and in the refutation of contrary views” (73).23 They quote with approval C. S. Lewis’s statement that “good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered” (74).24 Philosophy is the necessary prerequisite to systematic theology and to apologetics, because both require “the philosophical tools of clear, consistent, and correct thinking” (76). Apologetics “involves the construction of good arguments or the supplying of good evidence in justification of the basic truth of Christianity. . . . This task falls squarely on the shoulders of philosophy.” Philosophy is also necessary to the task of polemics and to the effort of communicating the Christian worldview. Geisler does not believe that the “glasses” of one’s non-Christian worldview are cemented to one’s face and can be removed only by a supernatural conversion, but he does acknowledge that people view things according to the models or paradigms they have embraced. “One task of Christian philosophy, then, is to work on a pre-evangelistic level to get the outsider to look around the edges or through the cracks of his glasses, or to take them off and try a set of ‘theistic glasses’ on for size. Philosophy performs the process indicated by these metaphors through philosophical argumentation” (78).

Stuart Hackett, an evangelical philosopher whose students included William Lane Craig, identified philosophy with apologetics perhaps as forcefully as anyone has. Hackett notes that philosophy deals with such questions as the possibility of knowledge (epistemology), the ultimate nature of reality (metaphysics), and our proper conduct in the light of reality (ethics). He then suggests that apologetics also seeks to defend a particular set of answers to these questions. “In this broad sense, apologetics is practically coextensive with the whole philosophical enterprise: it is not merely a defense—it is rather a defense of conclusions which the rational analysis of human experience fully justifies.”25

The importance of philosophy to classical apologetics is emphatically affirmed in J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig’s textbook, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview.26 “One of the awesome tasks of Christian philosophers is to help turn the contemporary intellectual tide in such a way as to foster a sociocultural milieu in which Christian faith can be regarded as an intellectually credible option for thinking men and women” (2). Of all the disciplines in the university curriculum, philosophy “is the most foundational of the disciplines, since it examines the presuppositions and ramifications of every discipline at the university—including itself!” (3). Philosophy is important for Christians, first of all, as “an aid in the task of apologetics” (14). “When an objection against Christianity comes from some discipline of study, that objection almost always involves the use of philosophy” (15).

Christianity Consistent with Science

Classical apologists generally try to maintain a balanced view of science, neither uncritically endorsing it nor hypercritically rejecting it. They believe apologists should seek to show that Christianity is consistent with the scientific facts, and that this usually, though not always, includes comparing what Christianity says about the world and mankind with what current scientific theorists have concluded. But scientists can be wrong, and the way science is applied by both scientists and nonscientists often leads to error. This means that Christians should be cautious about endorsing current scientific theory too uncritically, as theories change. B. B. Warfield issued a warning to that effect: “Science, philosophy, scholarship, represent not stable but constantly changing entities. And nothing is more certain than that the theology which is in close harmony with the science, philosophy, and scholarship of today will be much out of harmony with the science, philosophy, and scholarship of tomorrow.”27

Such caution is typical of classical apologetics. One must indeed use the most current findings by scholars and scientists, but at the same time their findings are not to be accepted uncritically. This point appears repeatedly in the writings of C. S. Lewis. For example, he observed:

Science is in continual change and we must try to keep abreast of it. For the same reason, we must be very cautious of snatching at any scientific theory which, for the moment, seems to be in our favour. We may mention such things; but we must mention them lightly and without claiming that they are more than “interesting.” Sentences beginning “Science has now proved” should be avoided. If we try to base our apologetic on some recent development in science, we shall usually find that just as we have put the finishing touches to our argument science has changed its mind and quietly withdrawn the theory we have been using as our foundation stone.28

This does not mean that we may not appeal to scientific evidence for Christian truth claims, merely that we must present this evidence with due caution. Lewis examplifies the approach he here recommends in another place when he applies modern scientific theories about the beginning of the universe to the cosmological argument:

If anything emerges clearly from modern physics, it is that nature is not everlasting. The universe had a beginning, and will have an end. But the great materialistic systems of the past all believed in the eternity, and thence in the self-existence of matter. . . . This fundamental ground for materialism has now been withdrawn. We should not lean too heavily on this, for scientific theories change. But at the moment it appears that the burden of proof rests, not on us, but on those who deny that nature has some cause beyond herself.29

The sum of the matter is that Lewis is confident scientific breakthroughs will not change the situation radically with respect to the scientific credibility of Christianity. They may lend some support to the Christian faith, but one must be careful not to exaggerate this support naively. In any case, science will not disprove Christian teachings.

Each new discovery, even every new theory, is held at first to have the most wide-reaching theological and philosophical consequences. It is seized by unbelievers as the basis for a new attack on Christianity; it is often, and more embarrassingly, seized by injudicious believers as the basis for a new defence.

But usually, when the popular hubbub has subsided and the novelty has been chewed over by real theologians, real scientists and real philosophers, both sides find themselves pretty much where they were before. So it was with Copernican astronomy, with Darwinism, with Biblical Criticism, with the new psychology.30

Norman Geisler, while finding much value in the scientific evidence for the creation and design of the universe and for the creation of life and of mankind, is likewise cautious about overstating the case. “Since science is limited and progressive, we should not expect complete agreement in every detail with the biblical presentation. However, the amount of present agreement is striking.”31 He warns that “scientific evidence by its nature does not yield full proof of things, except on a very limited, material level in some controlled situations.” He concludes that “one must temper dogmatism about scientific arguments. Perhaps it is simply sufficient to say that the prevailing view in the scientific community presents evidence that strongly supports what Christians have always believed on biblical (and some even on philosophical) grounds. . . .”32

On the basis of this stance toward science, evangelical apologists during the hundred years following the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species tended to give cautious, qualified acceptance of the theory of evolution while rejecting naturalistic evolutionism as a philosophical dogma rather than a scientific theory. So conservative a theologian and apologist as B. B. Warfield accepted the theory of evolution and argued that it could be reconciled with Scripture. Yet Warfield was critical of Darwinism as a philosophy, and wrote articles specifically on Darwin and the religious implications of his work.33

While C. S. Lewis was not opposed to the scientific theory of evolution, which deals with change within limits, he took issue with what he called the myth of popular evolutionism. “To the biologist Evolution is a hypothesis. It covers more of the facts than any other hypothesis at present on the market and is therefore to be accepted unless, or until, some new supposal can be shown to cover still more facts with even fewer assumptions. . . . In the Myth, however, there is nothing hypothetical about it: it is basic fact: or, to speak more strictly, such distinctions do not exist on the mythical level at all.” Lewis puts his finger on the humanistic, philosophical belief of evolutionism when he concludes: “In the science, Evolution is a theory about changes: in the Myth it is a fact about improvements.”34

Although Lewis has been enormously popular among evangelicals, most evangelical apologists since his time have not followed him in accepting theistic evolution. Since about 1960, evangelical apologists have tended to reject theistic evolution as a serious option and have instead argued for some form of creationism. Classical apologists, though, have generally expressed a greater degree of openness to other modern scientific theories. These include the belief that the universe is billions of years old instead of the thousands of years posited by young-earth creationists. Both Geisler and Craig have endorsed the old-earth view, though Geisler more tentatively than Craig.35

J. P. Moreland has for many years engaged in the most sophisticated analysis by any classical apologist of the nature of science and of its relation to Christian theological truths. He has, in fact, written an entire book and numerous articles on the subject.36 The burden of Moreland’s extensive research and writing on science and Christianity may be summed up under four headings.

First, he argues against naturalism and especially scientism that science can legitimately be practiced within the framework of a theistic worldview. Scientism, or what philosopher of science John Kekes calls “scientific imperialism,” is the belief that science alone yields genuine knowledge or truth. Moreland argues that scientism is self-refuting because the claim that science alone produces truth is not learned scientifically.37 He documents extensively the various sorts of limits to science that preclude any sort of scientism.38 The refutation of scientism and its presupposed worldview of naturalism opens the door to theism as a proper worldview context in which science may be practiced.

Second, Moreland urges caution in assuming a naively realist view of science. Although he thinks “a scientific theory should be understood along realist lines in the absence of sufficient evidence to the contrary,” he cautions that in some instances we should be reticent to grant that a scientific theory describes reality as it actually is.39 If the theory attempts to explain in totality phenomena that lie outside the proper domain of science, or if it conflicts with a rationally well established conclusion about reality, then the theory should be viewed as a construct that does not describe reality itself.40 This “eclectic” approach to scientific theories gives methodological rigor to the classical apologists’ characteristically cautious acceptance of scientific theories and developments.

Third, Moreland explores the various models for relating science and theology and explains why the two fields should be viewed as overlapping. Over against those who would “protect” religion or faith from science by relegating theology to the realm of values or spiritual matters, he insists that theology does deal with some aspects of the physical world (such as its creation by God). Thus “science and theology really do interact on common ground,”41 and effort must be made to reconcile or integrate science and theology.42

Fourth, Moreland argues that creationism can be a legitimate idea within the discipline of science. His main contention here is that science should not be defined in such a way as to exclude creationism a priori from the discipline of science. For example, he argues that the definition of science affirmed in Judge William R. Overton’s 1981 decision in the Little Rock creationism trial assumed both naturalism (the belief that nature is all that exists) and a naive view of the nature of science.43 He concludes that other arguments designed to prove that creationism cannot be science (regardless of the evidence!) misunderstand the nature of creationism as well as assume an erroneous view of science.44 He has also argued that a careful study of Genesis and of the biological facts shows that creationism, at least of a generic form, is reconcilable with the physical evidence as well as consistent with Scripture.45 Although he shows an openness to young-earth creationist arguments, Moreland appears to lean toward an old-earth position, freely drawing on modern cosmology for evidence of the beginning and intelligent design of the universe.46

Moreland’s approach to science well illustrates the central method of classical apologetics. His objections to scientism and naturalism, as well as to definitions of science that exclude creationism, focus on the question-begging and self-defeating nature of these positions.

Revelation Confirmed in History

According to classical apologists, history is important to apologetics because it is in history that God has revealed himself. As Warfield explained, Christianity is not a religion of “ideas,” that is, of timeless, “eternal verities,” but is rather “a religion of fact.”

A God who is only an idea, and who never intervenes in the world of fact, can never actually save a soul that is real from sin that is real. For the actual salvation of an actual sin-stricken soul we require an actual Redeemer who has actually intervened in the actual course of history. . . . Christianity is a historical religion, all of whose doctrines are facts. He who assaults the trustworthiness of the record of the intervention of God for the redemption of the world, is simply assaulting the heart of Christianity.47

To show that Christianity is rational, then, it is necessary to show that God has revealed himself in history—specifically as recorded in Scripture. But logically, before that can be shown, one must know that it is possible for God to have revealed himself to us in history. At this point the modern apologist confronts the question of whether historical knowledge is even possible. The notion of historical relativism has been around for a while, but it has gained fresh strength in the wake of postmodernism and its dictum that all knowledge, including historical knowledge, is relative and subjective. Moreover, even if the possibility of historical knowledge is admitted, many skeptics argue that we cannot have such knowledge of alleged miracles.

In his Christian Apologetics, Geisler addresses the supposed subjectivity of historical knowledge by arguing that scientific knowledge is conceded to be possible despite the subjective dimensions of the scientific enterprise. He admits that “no human historian can be objective” if this is defined to mean possessing absolute knowledge. But historians can have an objective view of the past if this is understood to mean “a fair but revisable presentation.” In this sense, “it can be argued that history can be just as objective as some sciences” (290).48 The very fact that we are able to distinguish “between propaganda and history” proves that history is not “entirely in the mind of the beholder” (291).

Geisler denies that “facts speak for themselves” if this is taken to mean “that facts bear only one meaning and that they bear it evidently.” He agrees that “there are no so-called bare facts,” but insists that the meaning that facts bear is assigned to them by minds and does not emanate from the facts themselves (291).

Finite minds may give differing interpretations of them or an infinite Mind may give an absolute interpretation of them, but there is no one objective interpretation a finite mind can give them. Of course, if there is an absolute Mind from whose vantage point the facts are given absolute or ultimate meaning, then there is an objective interpretation of the facts which all finite minds should concur is the ultimate meaning. If theism is the correct world view . . . then there is an objective meaning to all facts in the world. All facts are theistic facts, and no nontheistic way of interpreting them is objective or true. (292)49

For Geisler, then, the objectivity of all knowledge of facts, including knowledge of history, rests on the truth of the theistic worldview. If God exists, then all facts are what they are because God says so, and we have true or objective knowledge insofar as we accept the meaning of the facts as given by God. Arguments for the theistic worldview, then, come logically prior to arguments about historical fact, since our objective knowledge of those facts depends on our considering them within the context of the correct worldview.

Likewise, Geisler argues that the fact that historians inevitably make selective use of materials to construct their interpretations of the past does not make objectivity impossible, but it does make it important that events be seen in the right context. Ultimately this means that the meaning of events cannot be interpreted “without assuming an overall hypothesis or world view by which the events are interpreted” (293). “Hence, the problem of objective meaning of history, like the problem of objective meaning in science, is dependent on one’s Weltanschauung [worldview]” (294). For the classical apologist, the truth of the theistic worldview can and should be established prior to considering the historical facts pertaining to Christianity, making objective knowledge of those facts possible.

Proof from Experience

Classical apologists do not build their case for theism primarily on religious experience. However, they recognize that the Christian faith does not call people merely to believe that God exists, but rather to experience a personal relationship with God. The biblical concept of God is not only infinite and transcendent but also personal and immanent. The Christian faith is based on revelation from this infinite-personal God, and there can be no awareness of a revelation that is not experienced. Thus, if theism is to be defended as more than an academic theory, it is necessary to defend the validity and rationality of religious experience. For this reason classical apologists take pains to argue that it is rational to believe that people can have experiences of God and that these experiences can result in an immediate knowledge of God.

In Part One of Philosophy of Religion, Norman Geisler and Winfried Corduan offer three main arguments in defense of religious experience. First, religious experience is unique—it differs radically from moral or aesthetic types of experience. Moral experience, for example, unlike religious experience, cannot overcome failure and guilt. Aesthetic experience may produce wonder and admiration but not worship and adoration (18-24).50

Second, the religious impulse, if not religious experience per se, is universal. Classical apologists contend that the universality of religious experience across centuries and cultures points to a basic human drive toward self-transcendence. Even those who claim not to be religious betray their desire for the transcendent. Geisler and Corduan observe that “humans are incurably religious. When one way to transcend is cut off, people find another. . . . The sacred or secular history of humanity supports the thesis that by nature a person has an irresistible urge to transcend himself” (61).

Classical Christian apologists affirm that to be real, this transcendental urge must be more than a subjective projection or wish fulfillment; it must have an objective and independent basis in something real. The universality of this need, illustrated by such diverse thinkers as Freud, Schleiermacher, Heidegger, Tillich, Sartre, Beckett, Kafka, Nietzsche, Hume, and Kant, is itself proof for many classical apologists that the transcendent exists. They maintain that the premise that “what human beings really need really exists” is based on the experience of human expectations and the potentiality for all human needs to be met (74). “Some people may think that needs are real but cannot be fulfilled; few people (if any) will really believe it, and no person can consistently live with that belief” (75). Skeptics may deny that the human need for transcendence can be fulfilled, but no one can live consistently with the logical implications of a universe devoid of the divine (no ultimate meaning, purpose, value). Even atheists generally admit the human need to transcend, though they allow no object to fulfill this need.

Third, religious experience is too ubiquitous to be explained away. Geisler and Corduan reason that the evidential value of religious experience could only be discounted by making the radical claim that every person in the history of the world who claimed to have a religious experience has been totally deceived. Since this would be an onerous claim to prove, the conclusion that some reality exists that corresponds to the universal need for transcendence stands. Thus there must be a basis in reality for at least some religious experience. “For if even one religious person is right about the reality of the Transcendent, then there really is a Transcendent. It seems much more likely that such self-analyzing and self-critical men as Augustine, Blaise Pascal, and Kierkegaard were not totally deceived than that total skepticism is right” (76).

In his debates with atheists, William Lane Craig routinely ends his opening statements by affirming that human beings can not only know about God’s existence but can also know God by experience. However, he cautions, “This isn’t really an argument for God’s existence. Rather, it’s the claim that you can know that God exists wholly apart from arguments, simply by immediately experiencing Him…. For those who listen, God becomes an immediate reality in their lives.”51 His purpose in citing the experience of God, then, is not “to hold forth my experience as evidence to others of God’s existence, but to invite others” to experience God.52

For Further Study

Geisler, Norman L., and Ronald M. Brooks. Come, Let Us Reason: An Introduction to Logical Thinking. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990. A textbook on logic, with numerous illustrations of the application of deductive reasoning in apologetics and theology.

Moreland, J. P. Christianity and the Nature of Science: A Philosophical Investigation. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989. In-depth discussion of a Christian view of science by a classical apologist with training in science (see also Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 185-223).

________. Love Your God with All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1997. On the importance of developing a Christian mind for personal growth, evangelism, apologetics, and worship.

________, and William Lane Craig. Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2003. Two leading classical apologists team together in a massive textbook treating the nature of philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of science, and other subjects relevant to apologetics.

5Warfield, “Apologetics,” in Studies in Theology, 15; so also “Introduction to Francis R. Beattie’s Apologetics,” in Shorter Writings, 2:99; “A Review of De Zekerheid des Geloofs,” in Shorter Writings, 2:114 (where the word not has been accidentally omitted!).

10For examples of this line of reasoning, see Winfried Corduan, No Doubt about It: The Case for Christianity (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1997), 36-38; Paul Copan, “True for You, but Not for Me”: Deflating the Slogans that Leave Christians Speechless (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1998), 23-25. We used this same argument in An Unchanging Faith in a Changing World: Understanding and Responding to Issues that Christians Face Today (Nashville: Nelson, Oliver, 1997), 54-57.

14All parenthetical references in this section are from Craig’s Reasonable Faith. Craig gives a very similar exposition of his approach in his essay, “Classical Apologetics,” in Five Views on Apologetics, ed. Cowan, 26-55.

15As Craig observes in an endnote, the term comes from Edward John Carnell, but Craig applies the concept to apologetics in a way that differs from Carnell’s approach (326 n. 24).

16Norman Geisler, Knowing the Truth about Creation: How It Happened and What It Means for Us (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Servant, 1989), 79.

35Geisler, Knowing the Truth about Creation, 96-97, cf. 153-54. Craig’s treatment of the age of the universe is discussed in chapter 6.

36See especially J. P. Moreland, “Kuhn’s Epistemology: A Paradigm Afloat,” Bulletin of the Evangelical Philosophical Society 4 (1981): 33-60; “The Scientific Realism Debate and the Role of Philosophy in Integration,” Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society 10 (1987): 38-49; Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987), 185-223; Christianity and the Nature of Science (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989); “Theistic Science and Methodological Naturalism,” in The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer, ed. J. P. Moreland (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1994), 41-66; “Science, Miracles, Agency Theory, and the God-of-the-Gaps,” in In Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God’s Action in History, ed. R. Douglas Geivett and Gary R. Habermas (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1997), 132-48; and Part IV, “Philosophy of Science,” in Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, 305-90. In places in his writings Moreland refers to himself as an evidentialist, but this is always in a broader sense of an apologist who uses “rational argumentation and evidence . . . as epistemic support for Christian theism” (Moreland, Christianity and theNature of Science, 205 n. 42). Moreland’s approach borrows from evidentialism in the narrower sense of the term (as we use it in this book), but in general seems fairly classified as a classical approach.

7. The Rationality of the Christian Worldview

Classical apologists seek to show that the Christian worldview is rational or reasonable and therefore worthy of belief. The characteristic approach they take to accomplish this task is a two-step or two-stage argument. First, classical apologists seek to demonstrate that theism—the general type of worldview that affirms the existence of one personal Creator God and that is associated historically with Judaism, Islam, and Christianity—is true. Arguments of a deductive logical structure—‘proofs’ in the usual strict sense—are typical of this stage, although many apologists in this tradition also use empirical arguments (especially for creation) and claim only to show that there are good reasons to think that God exists. In the second step or stage of the apologetic, the classical apologist argues that, given the existence of God, the evidence for Jesus Christ and the inspiration of the Bible are sufficient to show that Christianity is true. At this stage the arguments are usually more inductive, and in fact are typically identical to the sorts of arguments used by evidentialists in regards to such subjects as the resurrection of Christ.

William Lane Craig explains the method in just this way. He acknowledges that the main argument he favors in support of belief in God does not prove everything we might like about God, but is rather proof “simply of a Personal Creator of the universe, and then the argument can proceed from there.”

Has this Creator remained distant and aloof from the world that he has made, or has he revealed himself more fully to humankind that we might know him more completely? Here one moves to the claims of Jesus of Nazareth to be the unique personal revelation of such a Creator. It will then be the Christian evidentialist’s turn to take over the oars from the natural theologian.1

Scripture as Conclusion

One of the most fundamental questions concerning apologetic method is the role that Scripture plays in apologetic argument. In general, classical apologists seek to make the existence of Scripture as a body of inspired and authoritative writings the conclusion of the whole apologetic.

For example, B. B. Warfield argued that the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture were the conclusion toward which apologetics worked, not its presupposition or starting point. “In dealing with sceptics it is not proper to begin with the evidence which immediately establishes Inspiration, but we should first establish Theism, then the historical credibility of the Scriptures, and then the divine origin of Christianity.” On the basis of the divine origin of Christianity, one may then go on to argue for the inspiration of Scripture.2

Warfield’s placement of Scripture at the end of the apologetic argument is reflected explicitly in the structure of some textbooks on apologetics from a classical approach. Norman Geisler’s Christian Apologetics is a perfect example.3 Geisler discusses apologetic methodology in Part One and argues for the existence of God in Part Two. In Part Three he presents an apologetic for Christianity per se, beginning with a defense of the belief in the supernatural (chapter 14) and continuing with a defense of the possibility of knowing that God had intervened supernaturally in history (15). Next, Geisler defends the historical reliability of the New Testament (16) as a prelude to giving an argument for the deity and authority of Christ (17). Only after all this has been established does he conclude with a final chapter on the inspiration and authority of the Bible (18). “The evidence that the Bible is the written word of God is anchored in the authority of Jesus Christ.”4 As we saw in our overview of Geisler’s apologetic in chapter 4, the inspiration of Scripture is the twelfth point in his 12-point argument for Christianity.

In treating the authority of Scripture as the conclusion toward which an apologetic is directed, classical apologists seek to avoid begging the question by assuming the authority of Scripture in apologetic arguments directed to unbelievers. These apologists argue that “reason must judge the credentials of any alleged revelation.”5 Doing so is not seen as arrogant or impious because, classical apologists explain, God gave us our faculty of reason and directed his revelation to it. Therefore God expects us to employ our reasoning abilities both to both recognize his true revelation and to detect the fraudulent revelations of other religions. As Stephen Neill put it: “Reason is not the affirmation of the arrogant autonomy of man, fashioning a universe according to his own ideas. It is that faculty in man which makes it possible for him to receive the revelation of God, to receive revelation in the form of the Word of God. But, to receive it, he must be humble, and ready to listen to God, whenever and however He speaks.”6

Classical apologists believe that human beings are responsible to use their reasoning faculties to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 John 4:1). They deny that testing revelations from God is a manifestation of human autonomy that elevates the mind as the final authority for truth. Rather, just as it is reasonable to look for credentials before submitting to a human authority in any given field, so it is reasonable to submit to the authority of revelation once it is shown to be well founded on the basis of God-given rationality. As Gordon R. Lewis argues, “To be responsible before the Bible, the unbeliever must have enough judgment to know why he should determine his lifestyle by Scripture rather than the Koran or the Book of Mormon. The use of systematic consistency to distinguish the Bible from the Koran in no way detracts from the Bible’s authority. It verifies the Bible’s claim above all competitors.”7

Negatively, classical apologists seek to refute common objections to biblical inspiration. This refutation involves both direct answers to specific objections and observations about the assumptions or presuppositions of those who reject biblical inspiration or inerrancy. Geisler, for example, in Inerrancy, a book he edited for the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, contributed a chapter entitled “Philosophical Presuppositions of Biblical Errancy.” There he examines the modern neoevangelical drift from the historical biblical doctrine of inerrancy. He traces the current crisis in biblical authority to philosophical presuppositions derived from various unbiblical philosophies.8 Geisler’s thesis is that “contemporary neoevangelical denials of inerrancy borrow from one or more of these alien and unjustified philosophical presuppositions.”9 The solution to such antibiblical presuppositions, for classical apologists like Geisler, is to reexamine the worldviews of those who hold them and make the case for a theistic worldview in which the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture will not be philosophically scandalous.

Disproving Other Worldviews

A worldview is the sum of a person’s basic assumptions, held consciously or subconsciously, about life and the nature of reality. These assumptions or presuppositions are sometimes “only brought to mind when challenged by a foreigner from another ideological universe.”10 Classical apologists generally maintain that while there may be many internal variations, the actual number of basic worldviews is quite limited. James W. Sire catalogs and contrasts several of these in The Universe Next Door, and then comments:

The fact is that while worldviews at first appear to proliferate, they are made up of answers to questions which have only a limited number of answers. For example, to the question of prime reality, only two basic answers can be given: Either it is the universe that is self-existent and has always existed, or it is a transcendent God who is self-existent and has always existed. Theism and deism claim the latter; naturalism, Eastern pantheistic monism, New Age thought and postmodernism claim the former.11

There are different ways of categorizing worldviews because of areas of overlap. Sire devotes separate chapters to eight basic worldviews: Christian theism, deism, naturalism, nihilism, existentialism, Eastern pantheistic monism, the New Age, and postmodernism.12 Norman Geisler and William Watkins in Worlds Apart, another evangelical overview of worldviews, distinguish seven worldviews, and their list differs in some respects from Sire’s (deism, pantheism, panentheism, finite godism, polytheism, atheism, and theism). There is more overlap here than may meet the eye: Sire’s naturalism is the same worldview as atheism, and nihilism and existentialism are philosophies that seek to apply the atheistic worldview to human life. Moreover, pantheism includes both Eastern pantheistic monism and the New Age. Narrowing the options enables the apologist to show non-Christians the fundamental choices that need to be made. Once they realize there are only a few basic worldviews, the excuse that there are so many beliefs in the world drops away.

One way classical apologists demonstrate that the number of worldview choices is finite and manageable is by presenting the major worldviews as the conclusions to a series of choices between two opposing alternatives. Doing so also allows the apologist to identify the critical issues that need to be addressed in choosing a worldview. Here again the classical approach’s characteristic emphasis on logic is evident. The following chart presents this schema.13

C. S. Lewis reduced the number of worldviews even further, to three. In broad terms, he held that most if not all people hold to some variation of three views of reality: materialism or atheism, Hinduism (of which Buddhism was a simplification), and Christianity (of which Islam was a simplification). For Lewis, the best options could be narrowed down to Hinduism and Christianity, and from there to Christianity alone because of the person and work of Christ.14

Having narrowed the worldview options to a manageable number, whether two, three, seven, or more, the classical apologist then examines the alternatives to theism in order to show that they are to be rejected. The basic strategy here is to show that these other worldviews are rationally incoherent. Other considerations may also be pressed (for example, that they are in conflict with certain facts, or that they are unlivable), but the characteristic emphasis of the classical approach to refuting non-Christian worldviews is to show that such worldviews are logically self-contradictory or self-refuting.

If nontheistic worldviews can be eliminated and theism established as the most credible one, this would reduce the number of viable world religions to three: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The classical apologist can then point to various evidences that Christianity is the true fulfillment of original (Old Testament) Judaism and that both Judaism and Islam fail to reckon adequately with the claims of Christ.

Although classical apologists argue that non-Christian religions as well as worldviews are false, they do not claim they are false in every respect. Rather, they typically argue that non-Christian belief systems incorporate significant truths, but also contain grave errors about God and his relation to the world, and so in the end must be deemed inadequate. Thus non-Christian belief systems do contain truth, but as a whole their final answers to life’s most fundamental questions are false. Again, the reason for acknowledging truth in other belief systems can be seen graphically from the worldviews chart: most of the worldviews clearly do make one or more right choices.

For example, C. S. Lewis frequently asserted that other religions contained much truth. “And it should (at least in my judgment) be made clear that we are not pronouncing all other religions totally false, but rather saying that in Christ whatever is true in all religions is consummated and perfected.”15 Geisler is careful to note positive features of such worldviews as pantheism, deism, and even atheism before presenting his critical arguments against those beliefs.16 The Calvinist theologian B. B. Warfield showed himself consistent with the classical tradition when he made much the same point as Lewis:

Christianity does not stand in an exclusively antithetical relation to other religions. There is a high and true sense in which it is also their fulfilment. All that enters into the essence of religion is present in them no less than in it, although in a less pure form. They too possess the idea of God, the consciousness of guilt, the longing for redemption: they too possess offerings, priesthood, temples, worship, prayer. Israel’s Promise, Christianity’s Possession, is also the Desire of all nations.17

The classical approach to refuting these non-Christian worldviews may be illustrated with pantheism. Most nontheistic religions have affirmed one of the many forms of pantheism, all of which in some way identify or equate God with the All—so that God is in some sense the ultimate and only Reality. Pantheism is closely related to monism, according to which reality is ultimately one and not many, a unity rather than a plurality. The rediscovery of Eastern (particularly Indian) culture and the promulgation of Eastern thought in the West have stimulated pantheistic thinking in Western culture, notably in what has come to be known as the New Age movement.

Geisler notes that pantheism is a comprehensive philosophy that focuses on the unity of reality and seeks to acknowledge the immanence and absolute nature of God. In spite of these positive insights, pantheism is an inadequate worldview because “it is actually unaffirmable by man.”18 Specifically, it is self-defeating for a pantheist to claim that individual finite selves are less than real. To assert “I believe that I am not an individual” is to utter a self-refuting statement (because it assumes the existence of the individual who says “I” while at the same time denying it). Pantheism wrongly assumes “that whatever is not really ultimate is not ultimately or actually real.”19 Pantheism also cannot adequately account for evil (its assertion that evil is an illusion is meaningless, since pain that is felt is real), and it is unable even to distinguish good from evil (since in theory all is one, nothing can be evil as opposed to good). Geisler also argues that to say that God and the universe are one says nothing meaningful about God and is indistinguishable from atheism.20

Proving God’s Existence

Disproving nontheistic worldviews and philosophies of life does not necessarily prove theism. Classical apologists, therefore, offer a variety of arguments in support of theism.

The complexity of religious knowledge, and the fact that it concerns a transcendent reality, makes proving God’s existence quite complex. There is considerable disagreement among apologists over the value and relevance of the theistic proofs. Immanuel Kant’s critique of the traditional theistic proofs continues to be influential, and most philosophers and theologians have moved away from the scholastic mentality of solid and unequivocal arguments for God’s existence. Classical apologists, while upholding the validity of most or all of the traditional theistic proofs, are generally more cautious about how compelling they are. They believe that arguments for God’s existence can show the reasonableness of belief in God even though they may be less than definitive or not persuasive to everyone.

In brief, four major arguments for God’s existence have dominated classical apologetics. The first is the ontological argument. First formulated in explicit terms by the eleventh-century philosopher Anselm of Canterbury, this argument reasons from the idea of God as the greatest, most perfect, or necessary being to the existence of that God. The second and third theistic arguments have ancient roots but received their classical formulation from Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, and are known as the cosmological and teleological arguments. The cosmological argument reasons from the existence of the world (Greek, cosmos) to the existence of God. The teleological argument (from the Greek telos, “goal”) reasons from the evidence of design in the world to the existence of God as the one who created things with a specific purpose or goal. The fourth major theistic argument emerged in modern times and is the moral argument, which reasons from the objectivity and absolute character of moral judgments to the existence of a transcendent God as the ground of morality.

One of the most vigorous twentieth-century defenses of the theistic proofs is The Resurrection of Theism, by the evangelical classical apologist Stuart Hackett. In this book Hackett defends the cosmological and teleological arguments specifically against Kant’s criticisms. He concludes that the traditional arguments for God lead “to the firm conclusion that theism alone actually poses a solution to the metaphysical problem.”21

Respect among philosophers for the traditional theistic arguments was at an all-time low for much of the twentieth century. In the late 1960s the Calvinist philosopher Alvin Plantinga helped revive serious interest among professional philosophers in the ontological argument. And in the early 1980s a detailed defense of the cosmological argument by the evangelical classical apologist William Lane Craig (a student of Hackett) prompted philosophers to take it far more seriously as well. The seriousness with which these and other theistic proofs are now viewed can be seen by reviewing academic philosophy journals such as Religious Studies and the International Journal of Philosophy and Religion.

Classical apologists are careful to issue certain caveats about the use of theistic proofs. One such caveat is that the theistic arguments as they are popularly understood are often invalid; that is, they need to be formulated carefully and rigorously if they are to be valid. Second, most people actually do not need to hear theistic arguments, since they are not atheists. What they need is evidence that God is the kind of God found in Scripture.22

Another caveat, issued by classical apologetics in the Calvinist tradition, is that theistic arguments remind unbelievers of what they already know but have been trying to deny. Warfield, for example, argued that from one perspective everyone already has knowledge of God, though most do not own up to it. People cannot be completely ignorant of God, although they can completely ignore God.23 We cannot escape all awareness of God. “God is part of our environment.”24 The arguments, though, are still useful and valid.

This immediate perception of God is confirmed and the contents of the idea developed by a series of arguments known as the “theistic proofs.” These are derived from the necessity we are under of believing in the real existence of the infinitely perfect Being, of a sufficient cause for the contingent universe, of an intelligent author of the order and of the manifold contrivances observable in nature, and of a lawgiver and judge for dependent moral beings. . . . The cogency of these proofs is currently recognized in the Scriptures, while they add to them the supernatural manifestations of God in a redemptive process, accompanied at every stage by miraculous attestation. From the theistic proofs, however, we learn not only that a God exists, but also necessarily, on the principle of a sufficient cause, very much of the nature of the God which they prove to exist.25

We will now consider three of the four major theistic arguments, focusing on their classical formulation as philosophical proofs for God’s existence. (The teleological argument will be discussed in chapter 10.) Because of its continuing importance in the classical apologetic tradition, the cosmological argument will receive special attention.

The Moral Argument

The moral argument can be viewed as one aspect of a larger argument for God’s existence known as the anthropological argument. This broader argument reasons from certain aspects of human nature to the existence of God, and includes arguments from morality, aesthetics, human thought and reason,26 and the need for meaning, purpose, and hope.

The moral argument relates to the universality of moral experience and holds that unless there is a God, there is no ultimate basis for moral law. Classical apologists answer the objection that ethical judgments vary from place to place by arguing that, regardless of time or culture, there is a built-in concept of normative conduct, a universal sense of “ought” and “should.” It is true that people can acknowledge the moral law without seeing this as a theistic proof, but this does not mean that such a law could have real validity apart from God. The real thrust of this argument lies in the fact that when people express approval or criticism of the actions of others, they are behaving as if theism were true, that is, as if there are such things as absolute rights and absolute wrongs.27 Classical apologists typically argue that one would have to assume this position in order to criticize it as wrong.

A good example of the moral argument in classical apologetics is the opening section of C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. Lewis begins that book by noting that human beings have the idea that they ought to behave in certain ways—what Lewis calls the Law of Human Nature—and yet they do not behave in those ways (26).28 After arguing that this Law is real and does not derive from human beings themselves but is instead “something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men’s behaviour” (30), he asks what lies behind the Law. “We want to know whether the universe simply happens to be what it is for no reason or whether there is a power behind it that makes it what it is” (33). The Law shows us that there is such “a Power behind the facts, a Director, a Guide” (34). Lewis hastens to caution, “We have not yet got as far as the God of any actual religion, still less the God of that particular religion called Christianity. We have only got as far as a Somebody or Something behind the Moral Law. We are not taking anything from the Bible or the Churches, we are trying to see what we can find out about this Somebody on our own steam” (37). Lewis goes on to argue that we can infer that this Somebody is rather like a mind, one unyielding in his moral expectations of us, and one whose expectations we have failed to meet (37-38). This strategy of formulating an argument for a general notion of God prior to introducing specific Christian claims is characteristic of the classical approach.

The Ontological Argument

The ontological argument is the only philosophical theistic proof that reasons in a purely a priori fashion (from certain assumptions or ideas as given). The first form of this argument as developed by Anselm was largely ignored until René Descartes revived it in the seventeenth century. The Cartesian formulation was later refuted by Kant, but it continues to resurface in contemporary philosophy of religion, along with Anselm’s second form, which adds the concept of necessary existence. Influential advocates of some form of the ontological argument have included Charles Hartshorne (a process theologian who uses it to support a panentheist worldview) and Alvin Plantinga (a Reformed philosopher).29

There are many forms of the ontological argument, some too technical to discuss here. Perhaps one of the simplest forms (if any of them may be called simple) is based on Anselm’s second version of the argument as restated by various modern philosophers.30

1. The existence of a necessary Being must be either (a) a necessary existence, (b) an impossible existence, or (c) a possible but not necessary existence.

2. But the existence of a necessary Being is not an impossible existence because (so far as we can see) there is nothing contradictory about this concept.

3. Nor is the existence of a necessary Being a possible but not necessary existence, since this would be a self-contradictory claim.

4. Therefore, the existence of a necessary Being is a necessary existence.

5. Therefore, a necessary Being necessarily exists.

Although classical apologists employ a wide variety of arguments for God’s existence, most do not accept the ontological argument. Most apologists and philosophers continue to accept the rebuttal that the ontological argument commits the fallacy of deducing the existence of God from the concept of God. For example, the formulation given above can be criticized by alleging that all point 4 means is that if a necessary Being exists, his existence must be a necessary existence. This still leaves open whether a necessary Being exists in the first place. Most classical apologists concur with Geisler’s conclusion: “No valid ontological proof has been given that makes it rationally inescapable to conclude that there is a necessary Being.”31

The Cosmological Argument

The cosmological argument reasons from the nature of the world as temporal and contingent to the conclusion that an eternal, necessary being must exist. Proponents argue that if anything now exists, something must be eternal, or else something not eternal must have emerged from nothing. Since the notion of something emerging from an absolute nothing is generally considered absurd, the principal options are that either the universe is eternal or it is the product of an eternal and necessary being. Two main forms of the cosmological argument enjoy widespread support among contemporary classical apologists.

One form reasons from the fact of a beginning for the universe to the existence of a Beginner. This argument is known as the kalām cosmological argument, and was first developed by medieval Muslim philosophers. As articulated by William Lane Craig, the kalām argument is essentially a philosophical, deductive proof.32 It may be formulated as a series of logical alternatives, as follows.33

Craig himself offers the following simple form of the argument:

Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

The universe began to exist.

Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Craig argues that the first premise is “intuitively obvious” and should be accepted without trying to base it on something else.34 He then defends the second premise on both philosophical and scientific grounds. His principal argument here is a philosophical argument based on the impossibility of a temporally infinite past. The idea of time extending backward infinitely (what is known as an infinite regress), through an actually infinite series of moments or events, is said to be inherently irrational. Therefore, on a priori philosophical grounds, this argument concludes that the universe must have had a beginning.35 The third statement is a conclusion that follows necessarily from the foregoing two premises but leaves open the question of what this cause is. Craig offers additional philosophical and scientific arguments in support of the belief “that it is a personal being who caused the universe.”36

Although the kalām argument as originally formulated is a deductive philosophical proof, Craig and other classical apologists supplement this rather abstract argument with the scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning. The argument here is based on the virtual consensus among cosmologists that this beginning occurred in what is called the big bang. It has been pointed out that even if a series of big bangs were postulated (for which there is no evidence), it is clear that the universe would not oscillate through such a series from eternity.37

The second major form of the cosmological argument originates from Thomas Aquinas; its most notable advocate among contemporary apologists is Norman Geisler.38 Geisler developed a modified form of the Thomistic cosmological argument that begins with the premise, not that the universe must have had a beginning (as in the kalām argument), but that there are undeniably finite, contingent, and temporal things. According to Geisler, the kalām argument is suggestive but not demonstrative. In brief, his argument states that “if any finite being exists, then an infinite Being exists as an actual and necessary ground for finite being.”39 If the universe is contingent, it requires a cause—and its ultimate cause cannot be contingent because of the problem of infinite regress. (Note that both Craig’s and Geisler’s versions of the cosmological argument appeal at some point to the impossibility of an infinite regress.) There must be, then, an uncaused or necessary being. Geisler sets out the argument in several of his books; here is one of his earliest and simplest versions:

1. 1. Some limited, changing being(s) exist(s).

2. 2. The present existence of every limited, changing being is caused by another.

3. 3. There cannot be an infinite regress of causes of being.

4. 4. Therefore, there is a first Cause of the present existence of these beings.

5. 5. The first Cause must be infinite, necessary, eternal, simple, unchangeable, and one.

6. 6. This first uncaused Cause is identical with the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition.40

Geisler explicates and defends each premise in detail, and then systematically argues that none of the usual objections validly apply to his restated cosmological argument. According to him, this argument from “existential causality,” while not rationally inescapable, passes the test of undeniability.

Opponents have raised a variety of objections to these arguments. For example, they claim that reasoning from the finite, temporal, or contingent nature of all things in the universe to the conclusion that the universe itself is finite, temporal, or contingent commits the fallacy of composition. This fallacy occurs when the attributes of the parts are attributed to the whole (for example, it would be a mistake to reason from the premise that all atoms are invisible to the conclusion that all physical objects, since they are composed of atoms, should also be invisible!). One answer to this objection is that arguments appealing to composition are often valid (for example, if all the pieces of a puzzle are red, the puzzle as a whole will also be red). Furthermore, at least some forms of the cosmological argument do not appeal to composition. For example, Geisler’s argument appeals to the existence of any or some finite beings; it does not require the assumption that the universe as a whole is finite.

Another criticism of the cosmological argument is that it moves from finite effects to an infinite cause. A finite effect, it is argued, requires only a finite cause. Classical apologists maintain that this criticism misunderstands the argument. It is true that a finite effect implies for itself only a finite cause, but such a finite cause must itself have been caused, and so forth. That is, a finite effect can be directly produced by a finite cause, but ultimately the whole reality of finite causes requires an infinite cause—an “uncaused cause,” as it is often called.

Yet another objection is that the argument begs the question by assuming what it sets out to prove. The kalām argument, in particular, is often criticized for reasoning from the inconceivability of an actual infinite series to its nonexistence. It is suggested that what seems inconceivable to the human mind is not necessarily nonexistent. Defenders of this form of the cosmological argument typically respond that the issue is not subjective inconceivability (what one person’s mind can conceive) but objective irrationality (whether the concept is rationally coherent).

The Deductive Problem of Evil

The problem of evil has been used by such thinkers as David Hume, H. G. Wells, and Bertrand Russell to challenge the existence of an omnipotent and benevolent God. Theists believe the problem is soluble, “since the events we condemn and the moral law by which we condemn them are both traceable to the same Source.”41 Historically, the problem has most commonly been set forth formally as an apparent contradiction among three propositions (often called the inconsistent triad):

1. 1. God is all-loving (God would eliminate evil if he could).

2. 2. God is all-powerful (God could eliminate evil is he wanted).

3. 3. Evil exists (God does not eliminate evil).

This problem has elicited a number of theodicies,42 or explanations for the occurrence of evil in a world made by God, but classical apologists agree that these three propositions are not incompatible or inconsistent with one another. In essence, there are five logically distinguishable responses to this problem. One may (1) deny that God exists (atheism), (2) deny that God is all-loving (dualism), (3) deny that God is all-powerful (finitism), (4) deny that evil exists (illusionism), or (5) affirm that all three of the propositions in the list above are true (theism). The strategy used by classical apologists is to criticize proposed theodicies that solve the problem by denying one of these propositions and then to show that affirming all the propositions is not irrational.

Atheism. The first alternative, atheism, argues that an all-good and all-powerful God must not exist, because he could destroy all evil and would want to destroy all evil, but does not. Moreover, God evidently cannot do the best, since this is not the best of all possible worlds. Most classical apologists relate these objections to the implications of a world where moral creatures have been given the freedom to make real choices, and to the concept that if an all-perfect, all-powerful God does exist, there must be a good purpose for evil. Moreover, although God has not yet destroyed evil, he will do so, and in a way that leads to the best possible world. That is, although “this is not the best of all possible worlds, it is the best of all possible ways (i.e., a necessary way) to achieve the best of all possible worlds.”43

Dualism. While the older forms of religious dualism are not influential today, various theories that question the absolute goodness of God continue to be defended. Classical apologists reject the view that God’s goodness is different from what humanity calls good, because it renders the goodness of God nugatory and meaningless. In a similar way, they criticize the views that God is somehow “beyond” good and evil, or that all evils are punishments for sin, as inadequate and distorted solutions.

Finitism. The theodicy that God is unable to control or stop evil has been advocated by John Stuart Mill, William James, Edgar S. Brightman, and the Jewish rabbi Harold Kushner. Classical apologists criticize this view because a finite God cannot assure the final triumph of good, and being finite, would need a Creator to explain its existence.

Illusionism. The denial of the reality of evil is an approach to the problem that is standard in much of Eastern religion and philosophy, and has gained ground in Western culture. Geisler points out that illusionism cannot account satisfactorily for the origin of the illusion of evil. He also observes that there is no practical difference between viewing pain and evil as illusions or viewing them as actual realities.

Theism. In addition to offering logical objections to each of these options, classical theists develop a positive case for the theistic solution to the problem of evil. Geisler’s argument is a good model of the classical approach. He considers five hypothetical alternatives for theism:

1. 1. God could have created nothing at all.

2. 2. God could have created only beings who were not free.

3. 3. God could have created beings who were free to sin but did not sin.

4. 4. God could have created beings who were free but must sin.

5. 5. God could have created beings who were free to sin and did sin.

The first and second options appear least desirable, and the fourth appears incoherent (if beings must sin, they are not free). The third option would appear to be the most desirable, but Geisler argues that what is logically possible and even morally desirable may not be actually achievable. In short, according to Geisler, if God created beings who were free to sin, he could not at the same time guarantee that they did not sin. “The actual alternatives for theism are dictated by the kind of world we do have, not the kind of world there might have been.”44

Geisler continues by distinguishing the metaphysical, moral, and physical aspects of the problem of evil, all of which must be resolved to have a complete theodicy. Concerning the metaphysical problem, Geisler follows the lead of Augustine and Aquinas: “Metaphysically speaking, evil has no essence or being of its own; it is a privation of the essence or being of another.”45 Evil is the lack of good resulting from the corruption actualized by human freedom. Thus the answer to the metaphysical problem of evil leads to the moral problem of evil, which Geisler traces to human freedom. Classical apologists usually make this free-will defense a centerpiece of their theodicy. They point out that the same conditions that are necessary for a volitional response to love also create the possibility of a rejection of that love. “Even God could not create free men without at the same time creating men who were free to rebel.”46

The classical apologist, then, reasons that evil, or at least the possibility of evil, is a necessary condition and byproduct of a maximally perfect moral world. After examining the alternatives available to the theistic God, Geisler concludes that “a world with evil is a morally necessary prerequisite to the most perfect world possible. A less perfect moral world is possible, but then it would not be the most perfect moral world that an infinitely perfect God could achieve. In brief, permitting evil is the best way to produce the best world.”47 That this world is the best way to the best world will eventually receive eschatological verification—a confirmation at the end of history, in the Final Judgment, of the truth of this answer to the problem of evil.48 This is an affirmation of the biblical promise that evil will disappear in the consummation of history. “Evil belongs to history; it is not in the eternal constitution of things.”49 Suspension of final judgment is necessary because of the historically bound and finite character of the human perspective. In the meantime, Geisler maintains, we have enough evidence to see that the present world fulfills the necessary conditions, in light of human freedom, that will lead to the best possible world:

But an optimally perfect moral world should contain four components: the process leading to the final achievement of a world where humans are free but never will do any evil; a world wherein is permitted the full and final uncoerced exercise of moral freedom; a world in which there is permitted the presence of enough evil to provide both the condition for the achievement of higher moral virtues and a comprehensive lesson of the wrongness of evil for free creatures; a world where free creatures learn for themselves why evil is wrong.50

Finally, Geisler maintains that all physical evil is to be explained either as a consequence of God’s granting free choice to creatures or as a contribution to God’s purpose to produce the greatest good. Some physical evil results directly and indirectly from one’s own free choices and directly and indirectly from the free choices of others. God may use some physical evil as a warning about moral evils or greater physical evils. Some physical evil occurs because higher forms of life live on lower forms.

Geisler responds to a number of objections to his theodicy with respect to physical evil, including the implication that the end justifies the means. He contends that God has utilitarian goals (the greatest good for the greatest number in the long run) but does not employ utilitarian means (doing evil that good may come). Geisler therefore rejects the idea that a good end justifies evil means.51

Miracles as the Credentials of Revelation

The miracles of the Bible are not incidental but integral to Christian theism. Before the modern era, they were generally viewed as contributing to the apologetic for Christianity. In the modern era, the philosophical and scientific objections raised against miracles have led to a reversal of their status in apologetics. Now, instead of citing the biblical miracles in defense of the Christian faith, apologists frequently find themselves having to defend the biblical miracles and even the very possibility of miracles. Thus miracles have seemingly been transformed from an apologetic asset to an apologetic liability.

Christian apologists have responded to these modern assaults in a variety of ways. The basic strategy taken by classical apologists has been threefold. First, they emphasize that miracles are rational concepts in the context of a theistic worldview. Second, they give special attention to answering a priori objections to miracles that are based on philosophical or scientific misconceptions. And third, they argue that given a theistic worldview, the miracles of the Bible do provide evidential support or confirmation for the Christian faith.

Consider first the matter of the worldview context of miracles. In an atheistic or naturalistic worldview, miracles are by definition impossible because there is no reality beyond the physical universe to effect the miraculous. Likewise in a pantheistic or panentheistic worldview, the divine is really a function or aspect of the universe, and again miracles are impossible. In a sense the pantheist might regard everything as a “miracle,” that is, as a manifestation of the divine. But, as Warfield points out, a definition of miracle that broadens the concept to everything renders the concept meaningless. Warfield observes that whereas deism regards God as utterly transcendent and denies that God ever intervenes in the world, pantheism regards God as purely immanent and on that basis holds that God never needs to intervene because everything that occurs is an expression of the divine. Thus both deism and pantheism deny the supernatural, though pantheism does so by redefinition: “When the natural is defined as itself supernatural, there is no place left for a distinguishing supernatural.”52 Thus the key to defending belief in miracles according to classical apologists is to defend theism. Once it is understood that the universe was created by an infinite-personal God who is both transcendent and immanent, the possibility that this God could do miracles is a given. Note how Craig overcame his own intellectual prejudice against miracles: “In my own case, the virgin birth was a stumbling block to my coming to faith—I simply could not believe such a thing. But when I reflected on the fact that God had created the entire universe, it occurred to me that it wouldn’t be too difficult for him to create the genetic material necessary for a virgin birth! Once the non-Christian understands who God is, then the problem of miracles should cease to be a problem for him.”53 In his debate with radical New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan (who teaches that after the crucifixion Jesus’ body was not given a proper burial and was eaten by dogs), Craig pressed this very point. During the dialogue Craig led Crossan, who professes to believe in God as a matter of faith but not fact, to reveal that in his opinion God’s existence is not an objective reality:

Craig: During the Jurassic age, when there were no human beings, did God exist?

Crossan: Meaningless question.

Craig: But surely that’s not a meaningless question. It’s a factual question. Was there a Being who was the Creator and Sustainer of the universe during that period of time when no human beings existed? It seems to me that in your view you’d have to say no.

Crossan: Well, I would probably prefer to say no because what you’re doing is trying to put yourself in the position of God and ask, “How is God apart from revelation? How is God apart from faith?” I don’t know if you can do that.54

Craig comments on this exchange at the end of the book: “What this exchange revealed is that on a factual level Dr. Crossan’s view is, as I suspected, atheism. ‘God’ is just an interpretive construct which human beings put on the universe in the same way that ‘Christ’ is an interpretive construct which Christian believers put on the purely human Jesus. In this light, it is no surprise at all that Dr. Crossan believes neither in miracles nor in the resurrection of Jesus as events of history.”55

It is essential to the theistic worldview to believe not only in a God, but also that this God created the world as a place of order. Only in a world where natural law ordinarily operates could we even recognize an event as a miracle, as C. S. Lewis argues:

First we must believe in a normal stability of nature, which means we must recognize that the data offered by our senses recur in regular patterns. Secondly, we must believe in some reality beyond Nature. When both beliefs are held, and not till then, we can approach with an open mind the various reports which claim that this super- or extra-natural reality has sometimes invaded and disturbed the sensuous content of space and time which makes our “natural” world. The belief in such a supernatural reality itself can neither be proved nor disproved by experience.56

For example, if babies were conceived in completely random and unpredictable ways, sometimes following sexual relations and sometimes not, no one would be surprised to learn that a young peasant girl had become pregnant before getting married. Only in a universe where babies normally came in the same way time after time would a virgin birth be recognizable as a special act of the Creator. The theistic worldview is not to be confused with the magical worldview in which “impossible things are happening every day.”57 In the theistic worldview God is providentially involved in everything that occurs, but he also intervenes and acts more directly or overtly in the world to accomplish special purposes. These overt interventions are called miracles. In a theistic universe the possibility of miracles cannot be fairly ruled out. This means, as Lewis points out, that the “various reports which claim that this super- or extra-natural reality has sometimes invaded and disturbed the sensuous content of space and time which makes our ‘natural’ world” should be approached with an open mind and evaluated on their own merits rather than rejected out of hand.58

The second aspect of the classical apologetic for miracles is the refutation of a priori objections to belief in miracles based on philosophical or scientific misconceptions. For example, it is often maintained that miracles are scientifically impossible—that they “transgress,” “violate,” or “contradict” the laws of nature. Apologists counter that this is based on a “misleading analogy between nature’s laws and the laws of society.”59 The biblical miracles are not antinatural but supernatural; they are not caused contrary to nature (contra naturam), but are rather caused by an agent who transcends nature (extra naturam), God. The laws of science are descriptive of how nature normally operates, not prescriptive of what must always occur; they do not legislate what God, who transcends space and time and instituted those laws in the first place, can or cannot do. Classical apologists point out that it would require a metaphysical assumption that the universe is a system closed to any influences apart from the four-dimensional space-time continuum to maintain that the laws of nature could not be superseded by a higher principle on certain occasions. The idea of a deterministic or mechanistic universe is not scientific but metaphysical, as is theism. The underlying issue with respect to miracles, then, is whether God exists; if so, miracles are possible.

Third, classical apologists argue that, given a theistic worldview, the biblical miracles provide positive evidence for the truth claims of Christianity. This is because belief in God does not automatically imply an endorsement of any or all miracle claims. Although the reality of God’s existence proves that miracles may have occurred, it does not prove that they have occurred. (If it did, theists would have to accept all miracle claims of all religions, or at least admit that any of them might be true.) Whether miracles have in fact occurred is a matter of history, and must be determined by historical investigation. Classical apologists do not ask that biblical miracle claims be accepted uncritically. They do, however, insist that once the existence of the type of God described in the Bible is conceded, the historical evidence for miracle claims must be taken seriously. They urge that the same canons of historical criticism that are applied to other historical records be applied as well to the biblical accounts without prejudging the case with metaphysical assumptions. Once this is done, classical apologists believe that the biblical miracles will be found to be in a class by themselves, and that the evidence for these miracles will be seen as compelling.

In one sense classical apologists argue that the question of miracles cannot be addressed until one has established agreement that God exists. However, Christianity entails certain unique claims about the nature and purposes of God, such as that he is triune or that he intends to save a segment of humanity on the basis of his gracious redemption rather than their works. The miracles of Jesus Christ in particular reveal this God to be the true God. In a sense, then, the biblical miracles do function as proofs, not of “a God” in a generic sense, but of God, the true, biblical God.

Jesus: The Alternatives

Having demonstrated the possibility of the supernatural, the classical apologist is ready to defend the actuality of the biblical miracles and in particular the claims to deity made by and about Jesus Christ. Norman Geisler’s argument for the deity of Christ is typical of the classical approach, and basically proceeds in two steps: (1) Christ claimed to be God; (2) Christ proved himself to be God.60

An alternate form of the argument lays out all the alternatives to the Christian view of Jesus as God and then shows that they must be rejected. The simplest form of this process-of-elimination argument is known as the Trilemma,61 and presents three possibilities—Jesus really was God (or Lord), Jesus knew he wasn’t God (a liar), or Jesus mistakenly thought he was God (a lunatic). Apologists need say almost nothing in refutation of the second and third views, since nearly everyone recognizes Jesus to have been at the very least a person of great wisdom and moral courage. This leaves as the only possibility, though, that Jesus really was God.

For the Trilemma argument to be complete, however, it must take into consideration that Jesus did not even claim to be God (step one of Geisler’s argument). There are two lines of reasoning by which non-Christians have denied that Jesus claimed to be God. They have either denied that he made the claims to deity reported in the Gospels or argued that these should be interpreted to mean something other than a claim to deity. The one clear alternative way of interpreting Jesus’ claims to deity is to interpret them in an Eastern religious sense as mystical affirmations of a unity with God that all people potentially may realize. We thus have a total of five possible views of Jesus—a set of alternatives that Peter Kreeft has called the Quintilemma.62 We may represent the Quintilemma as a series of dilemmas, as follows:

Again, classical apologists believe that a great deal has been gained if one can simply show that Jesus did in fact claim to be God. After all, most people will hesitate to assert that Jesus falsely made such a claim for himself. This is why most skeptics and unorthodox believers simply deny that Jesus ever made such lofty claims.

We will sketch here how classical apologists dispose of the four non-Christian alternatives and thus conclude in favor of the Christian view that Jesus was God.

Jesus’ Claims: The Gospels’ Reports

The primary premise of the Quintilemma is that the Gospels report Jesus claiming to be God. Perhaps the simplest way of undercutting the argument is to dismiss the Gospel reports as historically unreliable. Admittedly many New Testament scholars today contend that Jesus did not claim to be deity; the Gospel accounts of Jesus claiming divine titles or prerogatives, they contend, are later mythical or legendary accretions and do not represent the views of the historical Jesus.

Evangelical scholars and apologists have given enormous attention to rebutting modern skepticism about the historical reliability of the New Testament, especially of the Gospels. Classical apologists appeal to the same types of evidences in defense of the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament as do evidentialist apologists (whose treatment of these matters we will discuss in Part Three), with the aim of showing that the Gospel accounts of the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ possess both authenticity and reliability. Their authenticity has to do with determining that the New Testament as we now possess it is an accurate representation of what the writers originally wrote. Their reliability has to do with determining whether the writers had access to the facts of which they speak, and whether they are credible, faithful witnesses to those facts.

The issue of credibility, or believability, is of course at the heart of the matter. There are two aspects to this question, both of which classical apologists address. The first is whether the New Testament writers, particularly the Gospel writers, want to be believed as reporting historical fact. Against those who claim that the Gospels did not have an historical purpose, classical apologists such as Geisler argue that it is highly improbable that the early church had no biographical interests, and explain why the Gospels are vastly different from folklore and myth. The second issue is whether the Gospel writers can be believed as reporting historical fact. Here classical apologists employ a two-pronged defense. Positively they point to the archaeological and secular testimony to the events recorded in the Gospels. Negatively they emphasize that there is nothing incredible about the miracle accounts in the Gospels if the existence of God is admitted.

One aspect of the classical apologetic response to the claim that the Gospel accounts are legendary reflects the distinctive method of the classical approach. As we noted, the Gospels purport to be historical accounts about Jesus. Geisler observes that critics of the Gospels have often alleged either that the apostles and other eyewitnesses had experienced hallucinations of Jesus risen from the dead or that the apostles (or later Christians) had fabricated their accounts about Jesus performing miracles, rising from the dead, and claiming to be deity. Geisler argues that neither of these explanations work and that we should conclude that the Gospels tell us the truth about Jesus.63 But this argument amounts to an application of the Trilemma to the apostles: either they were delusional (lunatics), or they (or the Gospel writers) were liars, or they were telling the truth and Jesus really presented himself to the apostles as the Lord.

Jesus’ Claims: What They Meant

The second line of defense against the Christian view of Jesus as God is to argue that he really did not claim to be God in the Jewish sense. Although there are various heretical distortions of the biblical teaching that Jesus is God, we are here concerned with interpretations that take Jesus’ claims completely outside of any professing Christian context. In practice there is only one such interpretation: that when Jesus spoke or acted as if he were God, this is to be understood in an Eastern, pantheistic, and mystical sense. That is, in this view God is all or in all, and Jesus was merely claiming to have realized what is potentially or ultimately true about all of us—that we are all God. But this means that Jesus was a kind of Eastern guru or lama, a religious holy man who had realized his oneness with the divine and had sought to transmit this understanding to others.

Classical apologists have responded to this theory with a battery of arguments. Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli well represent the classical response when they assert that Jesus could not have been a mystical guru “for one very simple reason: because he was a Jew.”64 Kreeft and Tacelli point out a number of glaring contradictions between the teachings of Judaism in general and Jesus in particular and, on the other hand, those of mystics and gurus. The Jewish belief that Jesus taught was a public faith in a personal Creator who could be known because he had taken the initiative and revealed himself. Eastern gurus taught a secret, mystical experience of an impersonal divine reality in all things that is beyond knowledge but can be experienced by those who pursue it with religious fervor.65 Kreeft and Tacelli present a number of other differences and conclude: “So we have eight flat-out contradictions, all of them crucially important, between the teaching of Jesus as we have it in the New Testament and the teaching of the Eastern mystics and gurus. To classify Jesus as a guru is as accurate as classifying Marx as a capitalist.”66

Jesus’ Claims: Were They True?

If Jesus really did claim to be God, and if he meant this in the Jewish sense of being the personal Creator of the universe, then the simpler Trilemma comes directly into play. Classical apologists know that if they can reduce the options to these three—liar, lunatic, or Lord—they will have a convincing case for all but the most jaundiced, hostile opponent of Christianity. The reason is simple: even the most avowed non-Christians are incapable of convincing themselves, let alone others, that Jesus was a deceiver or demented. And those really are the choices if Jesus claimed to be God and yet was merely a human being. C. S. Lewis made this point in what may be the most often quoted passage in twentieth-century apologetic literature:

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.67

For Further Study

Craig, William Lane. The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz. New York: Macmillan, 1980. An historical study of the cosmological argument, reviewing the most influential versions of the argument in the history of philosophy.

__________. The Kalām Cosmological Argument. Library of Philosophy and Religion. New York: Macmillan, 1979. An exposition and defense of the kalām argument.

Geisler, Norman L. Is Man the Measure? An Evaluation of Contemporary Humanism. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983. Good example of a classical apologetic critique of a non-Christian worldview.

__________. Miracles and Modern Thought. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982. A defense of the possibility of miracles and answers to objections from modern skeptics.

__________. The Roots of Evil. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978. More popular exposition of the approach to the problem of evil found in his Philosophy of Religion.

Geivett, R. Douglas, and Gary R. Habermas, eds. In Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God’s Action in History. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1997. Several of the essays seek to defend miracles by placing them in the context of a theistic worldview.

Kreeft, Peter. Making Sense Out of Suffering. Ann Arbor: Servant, 1986. A classical apologist’s sympathetic treatment of the problem of evil.

Lewis, C. S. God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics. Edited by Walter Hooper. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970. Important collection of essays that includes “Evil and God,” “Miracles,” “Myth Becomes Fact,” “Horrid Red Things,” “The Grand Miracle,” “Christian Apologetics,” and many more of relevance.

__________. Miracles: A Preliminary Study. 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan, 1960. Arguably Lewis’s most ambitious, rigorous apologetic work, thoughtfully revised in light of criticisms he received of the first edition.

__________. The Problem of Pain. London: Centenary Press, 1940; New York: Macmillan, 1943; paperback ed., 1962. Lewis’s insightful treatment of the problem of evil, still somewhat unusual in its approach.

Moreland, J. P., and Kai Nielsen. Does God Exist? The Debate between Theists and Atheists. Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1993. Classical apologist philosopher with some evidentialist leanings debates an influential atheist philosopher; includes analyses by and discussions with other atheist and Christian philosophers.

__________. “The Resurrection of Christ a Historical Fact” and “The Resurrection of Christ a Fundamental Doctrine.” In Selected Shorter Writings of Benjamin B. Warfield, edited by John E. Meeter, 1:178-192 and 1:193-202. Nutley, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1970. These essays illustrate Warfield’s classical apologetic approach to the defense of belief in the supernatural character of Christianity.

12In the first edition of the book (1976), postmodernism was not discussed.

13The chart is based in part on Peter Kreeft, “Introduction: Why Debate the Existence of God?” in Does God Exist? The Debate Between Theists and Atheists, by J. P. Moreland and Kai Nielsen (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1993), 15, and in part on Norman Geisler and William D. Watkins, Worlds Apart: A Handbook on World Views, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989), 16. It should be noted that in practice religions sometimes combine elements of more than one of these worldviews. For example, some forms of Hinduism affirm both pantheism and polytheism.

32William Lane Craig, The Existence of God and the Beginning of the Universe (San Bernardino, Calif.: Here’s Life, 1979); The Kalām Cosmological Argument, Library of Philosophy and Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1979); The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz (New York: Macmillan, 1980); and Paul Copan and William Lane Craig, Creation Out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientific Exploration (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic; Leicester, England: Apollos, 2004). Many other apologists and philosophers have written on the subject since Craig, and all of them are heavily indebted to him. Two recent studies worth mentioning are those by evidentialist R. Douglas Geivett, “The Kalam Cosmological Argument,” in To Everyone an Answer, ed. Beckwith et. al., 61-76; and Garrett J. DeWeese and Joshua Rasmussen, “Hume and the Kalam Cosmological Argument,” in In Defense of Natural Theology, ed. Sennett and Groothuis, 123-49.

33Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 18; see 18-42 for Moreland’s own excellent presentation of the argument.

37Ibid., 100-116. The scientific argument for God’s existence is discussed in chapter 10.

38For a recent defense by another evangelical scholar, see W. David Beck, “A Thomistic Cosmological Argument,” in To Everyone an Answer, ed. Beckwith et. al., 95-107 (a book of essays in honor of Geisler).

42The word theodicy comes from the Greek words theos (God) and dikaios (just), and thus means the project of explaining God’s justice in light of the evil in God’s world. Although the word might be taken to imply that apologists are “defending God,” the point really is not to defend or justify God, but to defend or justify belief in God in light of the problem of evil.

43Geisler and Corduan, Philosophy of Religion, 313, emphasis in original.

60Geisler, Christian Apologetics, 329, where these are numbers (2) and (3), with point (1) being the reliability of the New Testament. But this point may also be treated as part of the argument for (2). Thus at its simplest level the argument involves two steps.

61The term trilemma apparently originated with Josh McDowell in his extremely popular apologetic book Evidence that Demands a Verdict (San Bernardino, Calif.: Campus Crusade for Christ, 1972).

62Kreeft and Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics, 165, 171. Kreeft and Tacelli use the terms Lord, liar, lunatic, guru, and myth to designate the five alternatives. An interesting variation on this argument is found in Kenneth Richard Samples, Without a Doubt: Answering the 20 Toughest Faith Questions (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 104-119, who adds and refutes another alternative (that Jesus was an extraterrestrial). See also Boa and Bowman, 20 Compelling Evidences that God Exists, 203-216.

8. Apologetics and the Limits of Reason

In this concluding chapter on classical apologetics, we will summarize this model or paradigm for apologetics, illustrate its use in practical apologetic encounters, and then consider its major strengths and weaknesses.

The Classical Apologetics Model

As explained in chapter 3, we are summarizing each model of apologetic system under two headings (metapologetics and apologetics) and six specific questions under each heading. Here we apply this analysis to the classical apologetics model.

Metapologetic Questions

Metapologetic questions deal with the assumptions or approaches taken by an apologetic method to the relationship between apologetics and various areas or kinds of knowledge. In chapter 5 we considered the approach taken in classical apologetics to epistemology (the theory of knowledge), theology, philosophy, science, history, and experience. Here we summarize our findings in that chapter.

1. On what basis do we claim that Christianity is the truth?

Classical apologetics emphasizes logic in its defense of the Christian faith as a form of knowledge. Apologists in this tradition may speak of logic, reason, rationality, coherence, or consistency; these are all different ways of referring to what we might call the “structural integrity” of a belief system. The form of argument given priority in classical apologetics is deductive in form. In theory deductive arguments yield certain conclusions, but this is so only if one knows with certainty that the premises are true. Thus, in practice classical apologists do not typically claim absolute certainty for their arguments. They also prefer to apply deductive reasoning in their critiques of non-Christian belief systems and in their rebuttals to objections to Christian beliefs. The most decisive form of criticism in classical apologetics is to show that a non-Christian belief or objection is logically self-defeating or self-referentially incoherent. This criticism is applied especially to relativism, both in Eastern religion and philosophy and in the New Age movement and postmodernism. All these movements are regarded as self-refuting and therefore incoherent on their face.

Logical argument in apologetics does not produce faith, nor is it the proper basis of Christian assurance or knowledge; these are the work of the Holy Spirit. Rather, the purpose of apologetic argument is to serve as means through which the Holy Spirit can lead nonbelievers to acknowledge the truth of Christianity.

2. What is the relationship between apologetics and theology?

Classical apologists typically regard the intellectual discipline of apologetics as in some sense preceding theology. That is, apologetics seeks to defend the basic principles and assumptions of Christian theology—to explain why we ought to believe in the Christian faith as revealed in Scripture and practiced in the Christian church. In this model, apologetic argument cannot assume or be based on theological positions, because the purpose of apologetics is to convince people to embrace the Christian revelation that is the basis of all theology. For this reason classical apologists see their mission as defending “mere Christianity” and not any specific theological camp within Christianity.

3. Should apologetics engage in a philosophical defense of the Christian faith?

Classical apologetics has the most positive view of philosophy in general, and even of non-Christian philosophy, of the four approaches to apologetics. The classical apologist views the apologetic task as articulating the Christian position in a way that communicates that position clearly and faithfully in terms that people of non-Christian worldviews and religions can understand. This does not mean that non-Christian philosophies are accepted without qualification, but that the Christian thinker uses the categories and insights of non-Christian systems of thought in order to make Christian thought intelligible to the non-Christian. Classical apologists tend to see a great deal of overlap in subject matter and method between apologetics and philosophy.

4. Can science be used to defend the Christian faith?

Classical apologists take a cautiously positive approach to the findings and theories of science. While not generally suspicious of science, they urge caution in jumping too quickly to endorse scientific theories in fields where theories have historically come and gone. Still, they regard modern developments in science, especially in cosmology, as encouraging confirmation of key aspects of the Christian theistic worldview. Classical apologists of the early twentieth century tended to accept tentatively the biological theory of evolution, though more recently evangelical classical apologists have tended to embrace some form of old-earth creationism.

5. Can the Christian faith be supported by historical inquiry?

The main concern that classical apologists have regarding history is to show that true knowledge of the past is possible. They admit that competing worldviews and other factors tend to skew our perceptions of the past. For this reason they typically conclude that an accurate view of history, especially with regard to the significance of past events, requires adherence to a true worldview. In other words, one must have a theistic view of the world and of history to understand the past correctly.

6. How is our knowledge of Christian truth related to our experience?

Classical apologists do not place heavy emphasis on arguments from experience. However, they do contend that the commonality of religious experience and the virtual universality of the religious impulse prove there is a transcendent reality toward which human beings incorrigibly yearn. What all or nearly all people need must exist in some form; so if people have a need for God, then there must be a God. To deny the existence of the transcendent, one would have to contend that everyone in history who has had a religious experience was totally deceived in thinking he had experienced transcendent reality.

Apologetic Questions

Apologetic questions deal with issues commonly raised by non-Christians themselves. In chapter 6 we considered the approach classical apologetics takes to answering questions about the Bible, Christianity and other belief systems, the existence of God, the problem of evil, the credibility of miracles, and the claims of Jesus Christ. Here we summarize our findings in that chapter.

1. Why should we believe in the Bible?

In one sense all Christian apologists urge that the Bible should be believed because it is true—indeed, because it is God’s word of truth. But the four apologetic methods approach this question in different ways. Classical apologists commonly reserve it for the end of the apologetic task. Only after the existence of God, the credibility of his intervening in history, and the deity of Jesus Christ have been shown to be true do they seek to establish the inspiration and authority of Scripture. In their view we believe in the Bible because we believe in the God revealed in Christ—not the other way around. Moreover, they are generally frank about saying that reason may be validly used to test and verify the claim of the Bible to be a revelation from God. Doing so does not elevate reason above Scripture; rather, it takes account of the fact that God communicated his revelation to us in a rational form and expects us to recognize and receive it through our faculty of reason.

2. Don’t all religions lead to God?

Classical apologists tend to approach the question of the revelatory character of non-Christian religions by analyzing those religions in terms of their worldviews. By reducing alternative belief systems to a manageable number, the apologist can analyze the basic worldview options and show that theism is the correct one. This reduces the number of viable world religions to three: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Classical apologists then point to various evidences that Christianity is the true fulfillment of original (Old Testament) Judaism and that both Judaism and Islam fail to reckon adequately with the claims of Christ. But they do not claim there is no truth in non-Christian religions. In fact, they argue that God reveals himself to all people and that all religions reflect that revelation, albeit in partial and corrupt form. In this sense non-Christian religions can be viewed as expressions of hope or longing for the full and redemptive revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

3. How do we know that God exists?

Although classical apologists are generally careful to point out that there is no substitute for a personal relationship with God through faith in Christ and the indwelling presence of God by his Holy Spirit, they do maintain that the existence of God can be demonstrated rationally. While most of them do not endorse all the traditional theistic proofs, they all endorse one or more of those arguments in some form. Further, while most are not averse to arguments that appeal to scientific facts or other inductive evidence, the primary form of theistic argument most classical apologists favor is deductive. The most commonly used theistic proofs in the classical tradition are the cosmological argument (which reasons from the world to God), the teleological argument (which reasons from order or design to God), the moral argument (which reasons from moral absolutes to God as the absolute source of morality), and the ontological argument (which reasons from the idea of God to the existence of God).

4. If God does exist, why does he permit evil?

Classical apologists usually address the problem of evil in its historically most influential form as a logical conundrum: How can God be all-powerful and all-loving, yet permit evil? This seeming contradiction is typically resolved by showing that it is logically necessary, or at least logically possible, for God to permit evil in order for God’s loving purpose in creation to be realized. The most common answers focus on the beginning and the end. Evil originated because God created beings with a capacity for choice (the free-will defense). Evil will be overcome both because God will one day eliminate it and because God will bring about a greater good as a result of the evil he has temporarily permitted.

5. Aren’t the miracles of the Bible spiritual myths or legends and not literal fact?

Classical apologists defend the coherence of belief in miracles. They attribute modern denials of the biblical miracles to an antisupernatural mind-set that at its root is a product of a nontheistic worldview. Thus miracles must be defended primarily by defending the theistic worldview and showing that they are neither impossible nor implausible given the existence of God.

6. Why should I believe in Jesus?

Classical apologists regard faith in Jesus as the core issue in apologetics. To press the claims of Christ, they urge nonbelievers to choose how they will view Jesus. Nonbelievers are told there are only so many alternatives in light of the Gospels’ reports that Jesus claimed to be God. One might say that Jesus made no such claim—but then how did Jews come to believe this about a crucified man? Or one might suggest that he did claim to be God but meant it in the Eastern mystical sense that we are all one with God—but is this doctrine likely to have fallen from the lips of a Jewish rabbi? If one chooses neither of these options, one must believe that Jesus was either wrong about being God or right. If he was wrong, he was either a liar or a lunatic. If he was right, then he was indeed Lord. The one explanation that can’t stand up to the evidence is that Jesus was merely a great teacher.

The following table presents an overview of the classical model of apologetics with these twelve questions in mind.

Issue

Position

Metapologetics

Knowledge

Logic is the primary test of worldviews

Postmodernism is self-refuting

Spirit’s witness is the ground of knowledge

Theology

Apologetics establishes foundation of theology

Apologetics defends “mere Christianity”

Philosophy

Apologetics overlaps philosophy’s subject matter

Substantive use of non-Christian philosophy

Science

Cautiously accepts established theories

Science and theology overlap, both rational

Typically old-earth creationism

History

Objective view of history difficult but possible

Right view of history requires right worldview

Experience

Religious experience not irrational

Argument from religious desire

Apologetics

Scripture

Reason used to test Scripture’s credentials

Begin with theism, conclude with inspiration

Fulfilled prophecy proves inspiration if God exists

Religions

Religious pluralism is illogical

Nontheistic worldviews are incoherent

God

Generally deductive proofs favored

Cosmological, moral arguments most common

Evil

Deductive problem of evil: Is theism inconsistent?

Beginning: evil result of free choice of creatures

End: world with evil best way to best world

Miracles

Miracles credible given a theistic worldview

Miracles do not contradict natural law

Jesus

Jesus’ claim to deity excludes him as mere man

Quintilemma: Legend, lama, liar, lunatic, Lord?

Classical Apologetics Illustrated

In this first of four dialogues we will present in this book, a Christian named Tom becomes involved in a discussion with Sarah and Murali while waiting in line to see a movie. Tom is a computer programmer. He has read widely in philosophy and apologetics; his favorite author is C. S. Lewis. In fact, he has brought a copy of Lewis’s Problem of Pain with him to read while waiting to see the movie. Sarah notices the book and asks him about it:

Sarah: That book sounds interesting. What’s it about?

Tom: It’s about the question of why there is pain and death in the world if the world was made by an all-powerful and all-loving God.

Sarah: That seems like an obvious contradiction to me.

Tom: Yes, I know it seems like one. But I think it’s only an apparent contradiction, not a real one. I think a good answer can be given that will resolve the problem.

Murali: Excuse me, may I say something? This question is of interest to me as well.

Tom: Sure. By the way, my name’s Tom. What’s yours?

Murali: Murali. I am from India.

Sarah: My name’s Sarah. Nice to meet you guys.

Tom: Likewise. Murali, you were going to say something?

Murali: Yes. You said you thought there was a good answer to the question about evil in the world if God is good. I have found that there are many religions and they all have answers that satisfy the people who believe them. I do not believe there is only one right answer to the question.

Tom: Let me ask you a question, then. Do you think all the answers given to this question by the different world religions are equally valid?

Murali: Yes, I think so. After all, as I said, they are helpful to the people who believe them. And none of us is really in a position to say that our answer to this great question is better than anyone else’s.

Tom: Well, I don’t claim to have a perfect understanding of the issue, but I do think some answers are better than others. And they can’t all be right. For example, Taoism and other religions have taught that good and evil are co-eternal realities that balance each other out. If Taoism is right, evil is just part of the way things have always been and always will be. Christianity, on the other hand, teaches that evil has not always existed but began when creatures with free will chose to abuse their freedom by doing wrong. If Christianity is right, evil is not just part of the way things have always been, and some day evil will be completely gone. Now, these can’t both be right, can they?

Murali: You are looking at these religions using Western logic. On that logical level the two religions seem to contradict each other. But at a higher level both are true.

Sarah: Wait a minute. I’m not convinced that either of these religions gives a good answer to the question. And I certainly don’t see how they can both be true. Either evil has always been around, or it hasn’t. Which do you think it is, Murali?

Murali: I think it depends on how you look at things.

Tom: Well, how do you look at things?

Murali: I don’t have a very strong opinion on the question either way. I just think that whichever way you want to answer the question is fine for you, and that it’s wrong to claim that your answer is the only right answer.

Tom: But Murali, I’m not interested in finding an answer that is “fine for me.” I’m interested in finding an answer that is true. If one person’s answer to the problem of evil is right, it must be true, and any answer that contradicts it must be false. For example, I believe that evil exists because creatures like us have chosen to abuse the free will that God gave us. That answer assumes that other answers that contradict it must be false. For example, saying that evil resulted from a conflict among the gods, as in ancient polytheism, or that evil is an illusion, as the New Age movement claims, simply cannot agree with the belief that evil is a choice made by creatures to rebel against their Creator. So if you say my answer is not the only right answer, you’re saying it is the wrong answer.

Sarah: But you’re assuming that God exists.

Tom: Not really. I’m saying that if God exists, then the problem of evil has to be solved by understanding who God is and what his purpose is in creating this world. But I don’t simply assume God exists. I think there are good reasons for believing that God exists. I’d be happy to share those reasons with you if you’re interested.

Sarah: I took a course in philosophy last year, and most philosophers today agree that there’s no way to prove that God exists.

Tom: Well, that depends on what you mean by “prove.” If you studied philosophy, then you probably know that there are lots of good arguments that show that it is more reasonable to believe that God exists than that he doesn’t.

Sarah: But these arguments don’t seem to me to outweigh the problem of evil. After all, it’s a blatant contradiction. If God is all-powerful, he could stop evil anytime he wants to. If God is all-loving, then he’d want to stop it right away, maybe even before it got started. But evil has been around for a long time, and God hasn’t done anything to stop it. So it seems that either God doesn’t exist at all, or that if he does exist he either isn’t all-powerful or he isn’t all-loving. Which is it?

Tom: Your dilemma has another solution. God may allow evil because, as an all-loving God, he has a greater good in mind that necessitates allowing evil to exist, and as an all-powerful God, he has the ability to bring about that greater good despite all the evil that happens.

Sarah: What exactly is this greater good that requires God to allow evil in the world?

Tom: God has a plan to bring about the best of all possible worlds, a world with finite creatures with the capacity to love one another. For him to carry out that plan, he had to give us the freedom to do good or evil.

Sarah: Why? Why couldn’t he just make everybody choose to do good?

Tom: I’m not sure I understand this perfectly myself, but it seems to me that if God made everybody do good all the time, then it wouldn’t really be good. You see, God is a God of love, and he wants us to be creatures who love him and love each other. But even God can’t make people love others. He can do a lot to make it possible for us to love, but in some sense that love has to be freely given. But evidently people who have the capacity to give freely must also have the capacity, at least at first, to withhold freely. And that’s what’s happened. Creatures that God created with the capacity to love or not to love have chosen not to love God, and the result has been that we have had a very hard time loving each other as well.

Murali: But insisting that one’s religion is the only true religion has been one of the main reasons for people not getting along in this world. In the part of the world where I come from, Hindus and Muslims kill each other over religion. In the Middle East it’s the Jews against the Muslims. In Northern Ireland it’s been the Catholics against the Protestants. People need to stop being so intolerant of the religions of other people and try to get along. Any religion is good as long as it isn’t made into a reason to hate and kill people of other religions.

Sarah: It sounds like most of the world’s religions have made the problem of evil worse, not better. Maybe we’d be better off with less religion and more education.

Tom: I’m inclined to agree with both of you more than you might think. I agree that religion has often been made the basis for hating and killing other people. But religion has also been made the basis for loving and caring for other people. I think that any religion that teaches hatred and violence against other people because of their beliefs is wrong.

Sarah: But doesn’t Christianity have a long history of teaching those things? Look at the Crusades, and the Inquisitions. Look at the long history of anti-Semitism in Christianity. I don’t think Christianity is exempt from the charge of teaching hatred and violence against others because of their beliefs.

Tom: Again, I think you might be surprised to hear that I agree with you. But I’m not saying Christianity as a religion has always been right. Far from it. Christians, especially Christians in positions of political power, have done some terrible things. When they do evil, they disobey God himself. That’s what evil is, whether it’s Christians or non-Christians doing it.

Murali: But if you agree that Christians also do evil, why insist that Christianity is the only right religion? What is the advantage in believing in Christianity rather than any other religion, if its people do the same things as people in other religions?

Tom: There’s no advantage in being a member of the Christian religion if a person does not take the central teaching of Christianity seriously.

Murali: And what is that central teaching?

Tom: I’m glad you asked! The central teaching of Christianity is that God sent his Son Jesus into the world to take our evil and turn it around to bring about our ultimate good.

Sarah: You’re talking about Jesus dying on the cross, right?

Tom: Exactly.

Sarah: I used to believe all that stuff about Jesus. But now it just doesn’t add up.

Tom: Who do you think Jesus was, then, if you don’t think he was the Son of God?

Sarah: I’m not sure. I don’t think anyone really knows much about the real Jesus. I mean, I’m sure he was a good teacher and all that. In his time I suppose he helped people, inspired them to live better lives. But all that stuff about him doing miracles and being God on earth seems to me to have been myths that people came up with long after Jesus was gone.

Tom: How long after, do you think?

Sarah: I don’t know exactly. I’ve heard that the Gospels were written maybe a hundred years after Jesus. No one knows for sure.

Tom: Actually, the most extreme dates in modern scholarship for the Gospels place them about forty to seventy years after the death of Jesus. Jesus died in a.d. 33, and nonconservative scholars date the Gospels between about 70 and 100. So within forty years the first Gospel, Mark, presented Jesus as the miracle-working Son of God.

Sarah: Forty years is still a pretty long time.

Tom: Yes, but it’s still within the lifetime of most of the people who knew Jesus personally. But besides the Gospels, we also have a number of epistles in the New Testament, especially ones written by the apostle Paul. Paul wrote his epistles between about 50 and 65, beginning less than twenty years after Jesus’ death. And Paul says he saw Jesus risen from the dead, and that Jesus was the Son of God. So we can go back to the very first generation of Christians, and what we find is that they always believed that Jesus was the miracle-working Son of God who had died on the cross and risen from the dead. And they always believed that Jesus himself had claimed to be the Son of God in the flesh. If you take just the statements in the Gospels that even the most radical scholars agree Jesus said, you find a Jesus who thought of himself as speaking with divine authority and performing divine works. So the idea that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God very clearly goes back to Jesus himself; it can’t be explained away as a later myth.

Murali: But, if I may, this claim to be the Son of God is hardly unique. All the great religions of the world have made similar claims about their great religious figures, have they not? In India, where I come from, we were taught that God manifests himself in many ways. Are we not all God’s children?

Tom: There is a sense in which all people might be called God’s children. But Jesus was clearly claiming something unique—something no other major religious leader has ever claimed. Remember, Jesus was a Jew. The Jews did not believe that God is manifest in many figures, as in Hinduism, or that we are all a part of the divine All. They believed that there was a basic distinction between the Creator and the creature. Their God was the transcendent yet personal Creator, Master, and Judge of the universe. And here’s Jesus, who was obviously a man, claiming to be that kind of God. Jesus forgave the sins of others. He claimed to have been the one who had sent prophets to Israel warning them of God’s judgment. He said, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” No, Jesus wasn’t claiming merely to be a human being who had realized our common divinity. He was claiming to be our Maker, Redeemer, and Judge.

Sarah: That’s just your interpretation.

Tom: I invite you to read the Gospels for yourself and draw your own conclusion about who Jesus claimed to be. I think you’ll find that he did not leave open to us the option of thinking of him as merely a great teacher. If he claimed to be God in the flesh but was really only a mere man, then he was either one of the biggest liars the world has ever known or he was crazy in the head. Which do you think?

Murali: I certainly wouldn’t say that Jesus was either a liar or a crazy man. Everything I have heard or read about Jesus leads me to believe that he was a wonderful person. But I have never thought about Jesus in this way before.

Sarah: I wouldn’t say anything bad about Jesus, either. But I’m still not sure this idea that he was God couldn’t have been a misunderstanding.

Tom: Fair enough. Why don’t you read the New Testament for yourselves and see what you think? If you’re interested, I’d be happy to get together with either or both of you later and discuss it further.

Murali: I’d like that very much.

Sarah: I’m not sure.

Tom: That’s fine. Let me give you my phone number and e-mail address and you can contact me at your convenience if you decide you’d like to continue this discussion.

Murali and Sarah: Okay!

Notable Strengths of Classical Apologetics

Classical apologetics, as the name implies, is the approach to apologetics that has the deepest roots in the history of Christian apologetics, and in its explicit modern form it remains a potent force today. Several strengths account for this approach’s perennial success.

Affirms the Universal Applicability of Reason

One of the great strengths of classical apologetics is its emphasis on the inescapable character of logic or reason. As Geisler observes, “Unless the law of noncontradiction holds, then there is not even the most minimal possibility of meaning nor any hope for establishing truth.”1 There can be no meaningful discourse without the fundamental laws of logic. The most basic of these is the law of noncontradiction (also known as the law of contradiction), according to which something cannot be both true and false at the same time and in the same respect. Although Christian apologists learned this and other principles of deductive logic from Greek philosophy, especially Aristotle, classical apologists rightly emphasize that adherence to these laws does not commit them to an uncritical acceptance of Aristotelian philosophy. Aristotle defined but did not invent logic.2 R. C. Sproul observes that a number of twentieth-century thinkers rejected the law of contradiction on the theoretical level. In spite of this intellectual denial, “they all live their daily lives in the tacit assumption of the validity of the law. . . . Man cannot survive or function without assuming the validity of the law of contradiction.”3

The importance and value of this emphasis on deductive logic is great. Logic is an enormously helpful tool for understanding and evaluating arguments, and is useful to the apologist in three ways. First, it is an indispensable tool for checking the apologist’s own arguments to make sure they are constructed properly. Those we are seeking to persuade rightly dismiss illogical arguments, even if the conclusions happen to be true. This is because the same kinds of arguments could also be used to support falsehoods. Illogical arguments are therefore unreliable, and it is the function of logic to pinpoint where arguments go awry. We have a responsibility to present arguments to non-Christians that they cannot fairly reject as misleading or unreliable. Logic is the formal discipline that provides us with the intellectual tools that can make our arguments as reliable and truth-based as possible.

Second, logic is a powerful instrument for exposing problems in arguments used against Christian beliefs. Classical apologists are rightly confident that every argument raised against the Christian faith is in principle answerable; many of these are problematic simply because they are logically invalid. Since most non-Christians are capable of understanding at least some basic principles of logic, exposing logical fallacies in their arguments can help show them that their reasons for rejecting Christianity are misplaced. The value of reason in this regard is heightened because reason, unlike technical information from the sciences or personal religious experiences, is in principle universally available to all people. If they are willing, non-Christians of any culture and virtually any amount of education can be helped to recognize that their objections to Christianity depend on mistakes in thinking.

Third, the emphasis on logic is helpful in commending the claims of Christ to intelligent non-Christians. Too often unbelievers get the impression that Christianity is an irrational faith that requires people to suspend their critical reasoning faculties. Classical apologists work to overcome this stereotype and to reach out to the educated and intellectually oriented non-Christian with the message that the God in whom we believe is the God of reason and truth.

Raises Awareness of the Unavoidable Role of Worldviews

Classical apologists rightly emphasize that it is impossible to think about the world at large or about facts or experiences apart from some worldview. “Refusing to adopt an explicit worldview will turn out to be itself a worldview or at least a philosophic position.”4 Classical apologists recognize that facts are perceived in accordance with an interpretive framework, a way of looking at facts themselves and even of thinking about the concept of “fact.” It is best, therefore, for people to be conscious and critical of the philosophy of life they have assumed, and to be willing to adopt a new model if it commends itself as a more reasonable alternative. Classical apologists encourage nontheists to try looking at the world through theistic glasses and see the difference it will make. This is not an exercise in futility because, as Geisler argues, “There are a limited number of mutually exclusive ways to view the whole of reality.”5

This emphasis on worldviews is significant and valuable for two reasons. First, non-Christians are often unaware that they look at life through a certain set of worldview “glasses.” Making them aware of this can help non-Christians rethink some of their beliefs. Second, non-Christians and Christians alike are often unaware that distinctive Christian beliefs typically seem odd or even absurd to non-Christians because they do not fit within their worldview. Comparing the two worldviews can help non-Christians recognize the rationality of Christian beliefs given a theistic worldview. Comparing the naturalist worldview with the Christian theistic worldview, for example, can help non-Christians understand why a miracle would seem reasonable and believable to a Christian even though it seems absurd to the naturalist. Once the naturalist understands that the real question is not whether miracles are possible but whether God exists, the apologetic discussion is placed on a much broader, and hence firmer, foundation of understanding.

Recognizes Common Ground with Non-Christians

The third major strength of the classical approach is its ability to find common ground with non-Christians in the principles of reason and in whatever truths they already believe. In this characteristic emphasis, classical apologists show themselves concerned with the practical task of communicating the gospel effectively to people of differing religious and philosophical beliefs. Non-Christians are shown respect when classical apologists commend them for recognizing specific truths even while seeking to convince them of the distinctive, saving truths of the Christian message. For example, classical apologists commend atheists for their rejection of superstition and their concern that religion not be used as a pretext for complacency or ignorance. Acknowledging the legitimate concerns and genuine insights of an unbeliever can be an effective means of building mutual respect and preparing the way for a candid discussion of the truth that the unbeliever still needs to hear.

Potential Weaknesses of Classical Apologetics

During the past two centuries the classical approach has come under increasing fire both from outside the church and from within. As the near consensus of the Christian worldview has been eroded and broken down by the onslaught of secularism and humanism in the West, many Christians have concluded that the classical approach has some significant problems, or at the very least limitations.

Let us first briefly mention some common criticisms of this approach that are based on clear and outright misunderstandings. Classical apologists do not claim that one must believe in God or in Christ on the basis of rational arguments to be justified in believing or to have a proper faith. What they maintain is that for such belief to be rational, there must be somewhere a rational grounding of that belief in truth—even if the believer may not be aware of that grounding or be able to articulate it. Likewise, classical apologetics does not substitute reason for faith. Classical apologists regard some of the beliefs essential to sound faith to be demonstrable by reason, but faith itself includes beliefs that reason cannot demonstrate. Moreover, faith is more than an assent of the mind to beliefs; it is also a response of the will to God, and this is something that reason cannot produce.

While such misplaced criticisms should definitely be set aside, we should give careful consideration to other concerns that critics have voiced about the classical approach. These criticisms do not apply to all classical apologists, but they do apply to some, and all of these criticisms explain why classical apologists generally do not limit themselves to a purely rational apologetic method. We will highlight three of these.

Overestimates the Adequacy of Reason as a Criterion for Truth

As valuable as reason or logic is in apologetics, many Christian apologists today express reservations about the primacy and comprehensive use of reason, and in particular deductive logic, in classical apologetics. We may distinguish three concerns under this general heading.

First, logic, though universally necessary, is universally insufficient as a criterion of truth. This is because at best deductive logic can only test the falsity of a worldview, and cannot actually determine that a worldview is true. This is because a deductive argument, even if formally correct or valid, is assured of arriving at a true conclusion only if the premises are true. Ultimately the premises of an apologetic argument must consist of facts derived from some source other than logical analysis. It is doubtful that any religiously significant truths can be proved using reason alone, apart from facts about the world or us. Application of the law of contradiction in critiques of worldviews may reveal flaws, but, as Montgomery argues, “the fallaciousness of another world-view never establishes the truth of your own.”6

Now, classical apologists during the past couple centuries have recognized that apologetic arguments cannot proceed on the basis of reason alone. As we have explained, contemporary classical apologists such as Norman Geisler or Peter Kreeft or William Lane Craig are not rationalists in the older sense of the term. However, the concern raised here is still an important one, because once it is recognized that reason alone does not suffice as the criterion of truth, one must decide what other criteria will be used in apologetic argument. And this raises the second difficulty for the classical approach’s attempt to find universally sufficient criteria for determining truth: there appear to be no universally accepted criteria of truth that can be applied without already assuming the truth of a particular worldview.

For example, most contemporary classical apologists employ some form of combinationalism (as Geisler has called it): testing for truth on the basis of internal coherence (logic) and external coherence (fact). Others add that whether a worldview is consistently livable or practicable must also be regarded as a test for truth. But these tests cannot be employed in a worldview vacuum. Those who employ them already have a worldview from within which they view some claims as coherent and others not, some statements as fact and others not, some ideas as livable and others not. Appeals to these tests can be misleading because one’s perspective on what is reasonable, factual, and practical is largely determined by the worldview one has already espoused.

Recognizing this problem, Geisler, unlike most classical apologists, rejects combinationalism as a test for the truth of worldviews. He states that “when testing world views we cannot presuppose the truth of a given context or framework, for that is precisely what is being tested. Combinationalism cannot be a test for the context (or model) by which the very facts, to which the combinationalists appeal, are given meaning.”7 What is perceived as rationally satisfactory and empirically adequate is actually predetermined by the theistic or nontheistic worldview one has. According to Geisler, “Combinationalism has no way to know whether the model fits the facts best because the facts are all prefitted by the model to give meaning to the whole from the very beginning.”8

Geisler’s alternative is a dual test of unaffirmability and undeniability, which only requires the admission that something finite exists to proceed to a demonstrative proof of theism. This test, though, comes very close to establishing rationalism, or the use of deductive logic alone, as the supposedly sufficient criterion for determining the truth of a worldview—despite the fact that Geisler recognizes the inadequacy of rationalism. The real question is whether Geisler’s argument for theism is sound and cogent, or persuasive.

Third, the emphasis on logical analysis has come under fire for presuming that human reasoning is capable of recognizing truth about God. Apologists and theologians outside the classical tradition often complain that classical apologetics assumes that God and his relation to the world are susceptible to logical analysis and description by finite minds. This assumption appears to fly in the face of God’s infinitude and transcendence, and rigorous application of it would seem to call into question such doctrines as the Incarnation and the Trinity, as well as predestination (particularly as understood by Lutherans and Calvinists). Many Christians regard these doctrines as paradoxes—concepts that are beyond resolution by logical analysis even though they are not illogical. Even most classical apologists today, while denying that any Christian doctrine is illogical, would concede that the being of God is beyond our ability to comprehend. Moreover, even if it is possible for Christians to perceive the logical coherence of their beliefs about God, it does not follow that non-Christians will be able to perceive that coherence. The classical approach assumes that the application of logical categories to God is a neutral, objective manner on which Christians and non-Christians can agree. Apologists outside the classical tradition question this assumption. There is, they insist, no epistemological neutrality.

For all these reasons, then, the primacy of logic is widely regarded as a potential weakness of the classical approach. Reason is a necessary but insufficient criterion of truth, and there is no universally agreed-upon set of criteria that can be applied from an objective standpoint outside one’s own worldview. In addition, there is continuing debate among Christians about the applicability of logic to the being of God and his relation to the world.

Depends on Theistic Arguments of Debated Validity and Value

The theistic arguments of natural theology have inherent limitations that make them a dubious foundation for apologetics in the eyes of many Christian thinkers.

First, in the opinion of many Christian apologists, there are reasons to question whether the traditional theistic proofs are sound. Mark Hanna speaks for many when he writes:

Comprehensive verificationism does not succeed because of the unsoundness of theistic arguments. Beginning with a mere concept of God, one cannot validly infer the extraconceptual or actual existence of God. Beginning with a finite world, one cannot deductively arrive at an infinite God. In spite of the great ingenuity expended in attempting to frame a sound theistic argument, none has escaped the charge of smuggling in question-begging assumptions. Although there are recurrent attempts to rehabilitate the classic theistic arguments (e.g., the cosmological argument by Norman Geisler and other Thomists, the ontological argument by Charles Hartshorne, the teleological argument by Richard Taylor), they are rejected by most philosophers.9

The claim that none of the theistic arguments is sound is perhaps the most critical objection to classical apologetics. If the truth of theism cannot be established as a philosophical starting point for presenting the evidences for Christianity, the classical model is fundamentally flawed. Of course, classical apologists maintain that at least one, and perhaps several, of the traditional arguments are sound. But it should be noted that even classical apologists critique one another’s theistic proofs. For example, Geisler disputes the validity of the kalām cosmological argument, preferring a modified form of the Thomistic cosmological argument.10 According to Geisler, the kalām argument cannot establish theism over either deism or pantheism, and therefore cannot establish the theistic worldview.11 We are therefore faced with the difficulty of deciding which, if any, of the theistic proofs used in the classical tradition is a cogent basis on which to defend theism.

A second limitation is that, even if they are sound, the theistic arguments are often exceedingly complicated and beyond the grasp of most people. Thomas Aquinas himself recognized this limitation, but it has attained greater importance in a modern society impatient with abstract reasoning. Even sophisticated persons capable of following an abstract argument are likely to remain skeptical in the face of a complicated, multilevel philosophical theistic proof. Concerning Geisler’s revised cosmological argument, for example, Whitcomb writes, “One must seriously question whether any sophisticated unbeliever would surrender to God after reading such an argument.”12

Third, even if the arguments are sound, it has often been pointed out that they do not lead to the personal God of Christian theism. Hoover adds that an excessive preoccupation with the theistic proofs actually inhibits the religious life because it can turn one away from the true personal God to a philosophical construct.13 This criticism does not apply to all apologists who employ the classical approach. Still, the danger must be conceded. Some people may indeed end up believing in God as the conclusion of an argument rather than as (to use Francis Schaeffer’s phrase) the God who is there. In any case, intellectual acceptance of the theistic arguments must not be confused with faith in God. As a rule, classical apologists recognize this limitation on theistic proofs, but it is a point worth emphasizing.

Does Not Address the Personal Dimensions of Knowledge and Belief

Classical apologists are concerned, as a practical matter, to persuade non-Christians to believe in Christ, as is evident in their emphasis on finding common ground with unbelievers. On the other hand, common ground for classical apologists is typically understood as rational or intellectual. This focus is widely perceived as a weakness in the classical approach because it overlooks the personal, nonrational factors that contribute to a person’s knowledge and beliefs.

As Thomas V. Morris has pointed out, “no world view, and in fact no human knowledge at all, is without dependence on the nonlogical or personal contributions of the knower.”14 Classical apologists are often charged with overlooking this fact and writing as though people reason in a way that is totally dispassionate, disinterested, nonpersonal, and mechanical.15 When the “personal coefficients of logic”16 are ignored, an apologetic system becomes abstract, theoretical, and impractical. Commitment to ultimate philosophical perspectives is not merely intellectual; it is also influenced by emotional and volitional factors. Few people can objectively put on another set of worldview glasses to see if they make more sense of the world than their own, as classical apologists ask them to do.

It may be unrealistic, for instance, to expect naturalists to be willing to make a radical shift in thinking by looking at the world through theistic glasses. Naturalists may look at the theistic worldview with prejudice because they assume it would commit them to a change in lifestyle if they accepted it. They may associate belief in God with unpleasant experiences they had in church as children, or with an abusive relationship with a religious parent. To extend the metaphor, many people are unwilling to try on the Christian worldview glasses because of how they think those glasses will affect their appearance. These factors are overlooked when objections to the theistic worldview, or to specifically Christian beliefs, are answered in a purely logical mode.

We should repeat the point that these potential weaknesses in the classical approach are not criticisms of all classical apologists. Most of the accomplished apologists in this tradition nuance their approach to overcome or at least ameliorate some or all of these difficulties.

The following table summarizes the major notable strengths and potential weaknesses in the classical model of apologetics.

Classical Apologetics

Notable Strengths

Potential Weaknesses

Affirms the universal applicability of reason

Overestimates the adequacy of reason as a criterion for truth

Raises awareness of the unavoidable role of worldviews

Depends on theistic arguments of debated validity and value

Recognizes common ground with non-Christians

Does not address the personal dimensions of knowledge and belief

Conclusion

The classical model of Christian apologetics has some significant strengths. It emphasizes the importance of logic, the need for an interpretive framework or worldview from within which facts gain meaning, and the value of finding common ground with non-Christians.

On the other hand, the classical approach is beset by certain potential limitations, which are often raised as objections to the entire approach. Of these, three stand out. First, the arguments used in classical apologetics tend to treat their criteria for testing the truth of Christianity as neutral criteria that can be objectively and correctly employed by Christians and non-Christians alike to determine the truth. Such neutrality would appear to be impossible: people come to the table with different ideas already formed about what is reasonable, what is factual, and what is practical. Second, the soundness of arguments used to establish theism as the true worldview is debated, and even those found to be sound are too abstract and complex to help most people. Third, classical apologetics tends to overlook the nonrational, personal factors that affect people’s beliefs.

In reaction to these and other difficulties, most Christian apologists today working from an essentially classical model moderate or qualify that approach. Thus the aforementioned weaknesses do not apply to all apologists who operate within the classical tradition.

On the other hand, other Christian apologists have sought to develop alternative approaches to defending the faith. In the next section we will consider the one that is most closely related to the classical approach, that of evidentialism.

For Further Study

Clark, Kelly James. Return to Reason: A Critique of Enlightenment Evidentialism and a Defense of Reason and Belief in God. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990. See chapter 1, “Proving God’s Existence: Problems and Prospects” (15-54), for a critique of classical apologetics.

Corduan, Winfried. No Doubt about It: The Case for Christianity. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1997. Originally Reasonable Faith: Basic Christian Apologetics (1993). Popularly written introduction to apologetics by a philosopher. Corduan follows Geisler’s method and argument very closely but also presents that apologetic in a more practical, people-oriented fashion. (Corduan was also co-author of the second edition of Geisler’s Philosophy of Religion.)

Green, Michael, and Alister McGrath. How Shall We Reach Them? Defending and Communicating the Christian Faith to Nonbelievers. Nashville: Nelson, Oliver-Nelson, 1995. Practical manual for making apologetics in the classical tradition more people-sensitive.

9. Evidentialist Apologetics: Just the Facts

Apologists Who Emphasize Fact

In the modern period American evangelical apologetics has been dominated by the evidentialist approach. Its emphasis is on the presentation of Christianity as factual—as supportable or verifiable by the examination of evidence. This type of apologetic system, while acknowledging that indisputable and absolutely certain proof of Christianity lies beyond human reach, defends the truth claims of the faith as eminently reasonable. More specifically, evidentialist apologetics argues that these crucial truths can be shown to be highly probable. Rather than defending the faith in two stages, as does classical apologetics (first by defending theism, then by defending specifically Christian claims), evidentialism uses multiple lines of evidence to support Christian theism as a whole.

In this chapter we will examine the roots of evidentialist apologetics and consider briefly the thought of five modern evidentialists. We will give special attention to the apologetic system of the influential contemporary evidentialist John Warwick Montgomery.

Historical Roots of Evidentialism

Evidentialist apologetics may from one perspective be viewed as a subtype of classical apologetics. Both approaches want to provide reasons for faith that are accessible to non-Christians. However, the evidentialist approach has over the past two centuries gradually emerged as a significantly different model of apologetics.

Defending against Deism

The impetus to the development of evidentialist apologetics was the rise of deism. By the early eighteenth century modern science seemed to be explaining more and more about the natural world, requiring God as an explanation for things less and less. Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton—these giants of science had completely changed the way modern people looked at the world. The enormous success of science encouraged many people to believe that eventually everything could be explained naturalistically, thus eliminating the need to appeal to the existence of a supernatural Creator to explain reality as we know it. Deism was, then, in effect a way station on the road to atheism: the deists allowed that God had created the world and initiated the processes governing it but denied that God was involved in the subsequent history of creation or of humanity.

To combat deism apologists began constructing arguments defending the supernaturalism of biblical Christianity that were modeled after the sciences. The idea was essentially to fight fire with fire—to show that a scientific approach to the Christian truth claims would vindicate their rationality. The dominant work of apologetics to appear in this context was Joseph Butler’s Analogy of Religion (1736). We will return to Butler’s apologetic in more detail shortly. Suffice it to say that the book was the most successful and popular work of apologetics for well over a century, and inspired a proliferation of apologetic works emphasizing inductive reasoning analogous to that used in science. Indeed, Butler can arguably be called the father of evidentialism, even though, as we will see, his apologetic was only a precursor to the evidentialist approach.

William Paley and Natural Theology

Butler’s approach quickly came to dominate conservative Protestant apologetics, especially in English-speaking countries. As deism flourished and contributed in turn to the skepticism of Kant and Hume, apologists increasingly mounted their defense of Christianity on two fronts. On one front they countered the philosophical objections to the traditional cosmological and ontological arguments for God’s existence with detailed, empirically based versions of the teleological argument, or the argument from design. This line of argument was sometimes called physico-theology or, more commonly, natural theology.

William Paley (1743-1805) presented a classic statement of this theistic argument in his Natural Theology.1 The book begins by introducing and elaborating on Paley’s famous analogy of the watch providing evidence of a watchmaker. The bulk of the book consists of a detailed discussion of the arrangement and functions of the various components of the bodies of animals and humans. Evidence from plants, the elements, and astronomy is also adduced. Paley argues that from the “contrivances” evident in nature, one may infer that God is one, personal, intelligent, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal, self-existent, spiritual, and good. In his conclusion he explains the purpose of this line of reasoning. Although he expects that most of his readers already believe in God, he suggests that when that belief is tested, it will be helpful “to find a support in argument for what we had taken upon authority.”2 Furthermore, studying nature in order to find evidence of God enhances our awareness of God’s hand in everything around us. Finally Paley urges that the proof of God’s existence furnished by natural theology should encourage us to be open to receiving as true whatever revelation God may choose to impart. “The true Theist will be the first to listen to any credible communication of divine knowledge.” By “credible” Paley means a revelation “which gives reasonable proof of having proceeded from him.”3

For Paley, then, Christianity must prove itself to be based on an authentic revelation. This leads us to the second front of evidentialist apologetics: its appeal to history. Such proof is to be found, according to Paley and other likeminded apologists, especially in historical evidences for the central biblical events. Paley presented a classic statement of these evidences in his 1794 book, A View of the Evidences of Christianity.

The Rise of the Legal Evidence Model

Paley’s argument in View was representative of a century-long trend of apologists developing historical, inductive arguments defending the biblical miracles, and especially the resurrection of Jesus Christ.4 The epistemological basis for such apologetic arguments was the British empiricism pioneered by the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704).5 Locke’s own approach to apologetics was classical in form,6 but apologists after him often applied his empiricist approach to general knowledge to the defense of Christianity. Ironically, Locke’s own thought was in some respects appreciated by the deists, since he strongly insisted that revelation claims should be tested by reason. He himself, however, concluded that the miraculous claims of Christianity were true.

In any case, in the eighteenth century Christian apologists adopted and expanded on Locke’s strategy for defending the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Thomas Sherlock’s book The Tryal of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus (1729) set the tone for what followed. As the title indicates, Sherlock argued for the historicity of the Resurrection on the model of a court trial. The thrust of the apologetic case was simple: an impartial jury, examining the evidence as one would in a court of law, would have to conclude that Jesus rose from the dead. Sherlock argued that the Resurrection was an historical event subject to verification by human investigation, “a thing to be judg’d of by men’s senses.”7

Numerous other apologetic writings in the eighteenth century argued in a similar fashion, emphasizing the evidences for Christianity. This legal-evidences apologetic tradition continued throughout the nineteenth century (and continues to this day). Another nineteenth-century advocate of this tradition was Richard Whately, an Irish theologian and churchman who sharpened the evidentialist approach in his famous book entitled Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Bonaparte (1849). The point of this book was that the skepticism of Hume regarding miracles such as the resurrection of Jesus, followed through consistently, would lead to skepticism regarding the existence of Napoleon (who had died in 1821). Whately also contributed a textbook on apologetics, Introductory Lessons on Christian Evidences (1850). A third figure of note was Simon Greenleaf, a Harvard professor of legal evidences who took Sherlock’s approach to the Resurrection to new heights in The Testimony of the Evangelists (1874). Greenleaf’s arguments continue to be read and cited by both scholarly and popular evidentialist apologists to this day, and his book was recently reprinted.

Joseph Butler

The Christian apologist who pioneered the evidentialist approach was Joseph Butler (1692-1752). In 1736 Butler published The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature.8 It was the most important work contributing to a radical shift in British apologetics away from metaphysical, rationalistic argumentation to a more scientific, empirical form of reasoning. Butler wrote it to refute the deistic claim that, while natural religion was valid, revealed religion—Christianity per se—was beset by various intellectual problems and could not be rationally believed. He argued that the problems raised for the Christian religion are analogous to problems in nature.

It is critical that Butler’s argument be seen in its context. Butler used analogy not to prove Christianity true, and not to provide a foundation for revealed religion, but to answer the objection that revealed religion is irrational. In his introduction he explained that his argument deals with probability. He admitted that the imperfect character of probabilistic knowledge is irrelevant “to an infinite Intelligence. . . . But to us, probability is the very guide of life” (2). He then proposed to argue, by probabilistic reasoning, “that he who denies the Scripture to have been from God” because of its apparent difficulties might as well, “for the very same reason, deny the world to have been formed by him” (4). Thus Butler sought to show that the deist, who admits the creation of the world by God, is being irrational in denying the divine origin of the biblical revelation—or at the very least “to answer objections” against revelation.

Butler rejected the attempt, typified in French philosopher René Descartes, to develop a Christian worldview “without foundation for the principles which we assume,” a project Butler characterized as “building a world upon hypothesis” (4). Rather, he took for granted the existence of God as “an intelligent Author of Nature, and natural Governor of the world” (5), and used arguments from analogy to answer deistic objections against the revealed religion of Christianity (8).

Butler’s book is divided into two major parts, dealing with natural religion and revealed religion respectively. The first division corresponds roughly to arguing for a position common to some forms of deism and Christianity, while the second division presents an argument for what is distinctive to Christianity itself. More specifically, Part I deals with life after death, arguing for the rationality of believing that rewards and punishments will be meted out by God based on our conduct in this life. Part II argues from analogies with nature that revelation, like nature, will contain things that seem problematic but are nevertheless true and should be accepted. Butler argued, for example, that the lack of universality in the Christian revelation—the fact that it is not known to all human beings—is not a valid objection against its truth.

Only in chapter 7 of Part II did Butler offer positive evidences and arguments for Christianity. He began by arguing that biblical history should be presumed accurate in the absence of evidence to the contrary. He pointed out that Paul’s epistles offer substantial evidence for the gospel, independent of the other apostles. And he noted that Christianity appears fairly unique in having been founded on the belief in miracles (in contrast especially to Islam, which does not view Muhammad as a miraculous figure). While admitting that none of these arguments is a proof by itself, Butler averred that taken cumulatively, they form a strong proof. Another line of evidence for the truth of Christianity is the fact of fulfilled biblical prophecy. Butler anticipated and responded to the objection that we are presently unable to understand all of biblical prophecy, pointing out that our inability in this matter does not invalidate our conclusion that some biblical prophecies have been fulfilled.

Butler was therefore frank in admitting that problems face the Christian who wishes to understand everything in the Bible and in Christian faith. But in his estimation these problems are minor and do not undermine the truth of Christianity. Rather, he found it remarkable that the Bible, written so long ago by so many writers over such a long period of time, is not viewed as more problematic than it is—that it has not been completely refuted and set aside.

Butler concluded The Analogy of Religion with a chapter emphasizing that he had been answering objections, not providing absolute proof. In fact, he wrote, “in this treatise I have argued upon the principles of others, not my own; and I have omitted what I think true, and of the utmost importance, because by others thought unintelligible, or not true” (249). By arguing on the principles of others Butler meant that, for the sake of argument, he had contended that even if the deists or other critics of Christianity were allowed certain principles or assumptions, their objections against the Christian revelation were still without force. He admitted that his positive arguments for Christian beliefs fell short of being demonstrative, but at the same time he thought they were “impossible . . . to be evaded, or answered” (251). “Those who believe will here find the scheme of Christianity cleared of objections, and the evidence of it in a peculiar manner strengthened: those who do not believe, will at least be shown the absurdity of all attempts to prove Christianity false” (251-252).

We conclude by emphasizing four points about Butler’s method. First, his approach was empirical, not rationalistic, and the character of his conclusions was that of probability, not certainty. His dictum that “probability is the very guide of life” (2) is a classic expression of the evidentialist perspective. Finite human beings cannot expect to gain absolutely certain knowledge of the past, of the course of nature, or of any empirical reality.

Second, Butler employed this empirical, inductive, and probabilistic approach in a defensive mode of apologetic reasoning. His goal was not to prove Christianity true, but to prove that deistic charges that Christianity was irrational were unfounded.

Third, Butler candidly stated that he was attempting to respond to the deists on their own ground—“I have argued upon the principles of others, not my own” (249). Thus, one should not conclude that Butler was claiming that Christianity requires an empirical defense or that its truth cannot be accepted on other grounds.

Fourth, Butler assumed the existence of a God, an assumption he could make because his opponents granted it. He was therefore not claiming to mount a defense of Christianity that would withstand the scrutiny of the hard-line atheist.

By contrast, the main opposing worldview for twentieth-century evidentialists was indeed atheism, or at least some form of agnosticism or skepticism. In the remainder of this chapter we will profile the apologetic thought of four leading evidentialists from the twentieth century.

James Orr

James Orr (1844-1913)9 was a Scottish pastor and scholar who eventually became a noted professor of apologetics and theology in Glasgow during the early part of the twentieth century. His books were highly successful and popular defenses of Christian belief among evangelicals in English-speaking countries around the world.10

In his classic apologetic book, The Christian View of God and the World as Centering in the Incarnation, Orr sought to defend the Christian worldview by appealing to the facts. Orr, who endorsed Butler’s argument in The Analogy of Religion (90),11 emphasized that faith in Christ commits the believer to a whole theology and worldview that need to be defended: “He who with his whole heart believes in Jesus as the Son of God is thereby committed to much else besides. He is committed to a view of God, to a view of man, to a view of sin, to a view of Redemption, to a view of the purpose of God in creation and history, to a view of human destiny, found only in Christianity” (4).

Orr proposes to defend the Christian view of all these matters by an appeal to history, for it brings “all the issues into court at once. The verdict of history is at once a judgment on the answers which have been given to the theological question; on their agreement with the sum-total of the facts of Christianity; on the methods of exegesis and New Testament criticism by which they have been supported; on their power to maintain themselves against rival views; on how far the existence of Christianity is dependent on them, or bound up with them” (43-44). Note Orr’s use of the courtroom metaphor popularized by apologists like Sherlock and Greenleaf; he speaks of bringing “issues into court” and of reaching a “verdict.” The imitation of legal argument is typical of the evidentialist approach.

Contrary to a common stereotype of the evidentialist approach, Orr did not maintain that Christianity was to be proved by an appeal to bare or brute facts. The facts support Christianity because they are set in a context that includes speech expressive of the meaning of the facts:

The gospel is no mere proclamation of “eternal truths,” but the discovery of a saving purpose of God for mankind, executed in time. But the doctrines are the interpretation of the facts. The facts do not stand blank and dumb before us, but have a voice given to them, and a meaning put into them. They are accompanied by living speech, which makes their meaning clear. . . . [T]he facts of Christianity, rightly understood and interpreted, not only yield special doctrines, but compel us to develop out of them a determinate “Weltanschauung.” (22-23)

In Orr’s view, belief in God and belief in Christ “stand or fall together” (65). “A genuine Theism can never long remain a bare Theism” (76). To be complete and stable, theism, or belief in God, must be held in the context of “the entire Christian view” provided in the biblical revelation (77). This revelation is absolutely necessary, because reason on its own cannot arrive at a Christian worldview. Reason can, however, give “abundant corroboration and verification” to the truth of the Christian revelation. This verification, while perhaps not demonstrative, at least is sufficient to show “that the Christian view of God is not unreasonable” (111). Orr is confident that the facts, properly presented, can be used to show that objections to Christianity are without merit. “The reason why Christianity cannot be waved out of the world at the bidding of sceptics simply is, that the facts are too strong for the attempt. The theories which would explain Christianity away make shipwreck on the facts” (234).

Clark H. Pinnock

Clark Pinnock is a well-known proponent of evidentialist apologetics whose approach to the defense of the Christian faith has been unusually diverse.12 His Set Forth Your Case focuses on the philosophical and cultural movements that have shaped twentieth-century thought in order to expose the inadequacy of non-Christian worldviews. In this book he decries rationalism and mysticism and espouses the epistemological alternative of empirical verifiability. Thus his apologetic system centers on the historical resurrection of Christ and the historical reliability of the Bible. Pinnock challenges the non-Christian “to suspend his prejudice against Christianity for the time it takes to examine fairly the evidence for the Christian faith, to take up a proven method for ascertaining the truth, the empirical method, and apply it to the biblical records.”13 Pinnock is confident that the person who does this will find a strong probable case for the truth of Christianity.

Pinnock’s Live Now, Brother details the metaphysical and moral crisis in human values and offers as a solution the concept of grounding values in a supernatural revelation. He then presents the person and work of Christ, with special emphasis on the Resurrection as an historical fact to authenticate the Bible’s revelatory claims. A Case for Faith offers a “comprehensive evidential picture” by developing five circles of evidence for the truth of the Christian faith: the pragmatic basis for faith (existential needs), the experiential basis (religious intuitions), the cosmic basis (rational scrutiny), the historical basis (historical evidence), and the community basis (moral necessities).

Like other evidentialists, Pinnock uses several lines of evidence as “reasonable probabilities” that combine together like “argumentative links in a legal brief” or strands in a rope.14 He offers yet another metaphor: “Like legs of a table, each shaft of evidence does its part to support the weight of the case for Christianity. Because we are all culturally conditioned in different ways, it is inevitable that some of us will be more impressed with one evidential approach than another.” Pinnock acknowledges that the knowledge gained through empiricism is only probable, but maintains that one cannot wait “until all uncertainty disappears before dealing with ultimate issues.”15 Probability, he writes, indeed falls short of the absolute certainty of mathematics, but “it is the sort of knowledge we are able to operate on in all the affairs of life, and it is adequate to provide us with a sound basis for the trustful certainty of faith.”16 Pinnock supports this position in contradistinction to presuppositionalism in “The Philosophy of Christian Evidences,” a chapter in Jerusalem and Athens, where he writes that “a philosophy of Christian evidences which employs theistic argument and historical evidence is needed, lest the gospel be discredited as a grand and unwarranted assumption.”17

Another major aspect of Pinnock’s apologetic approach is a defense of biblical revelation, inspiration, and hermeneutics in view of the challenges of modern theology and higher criticism. For Pinnock the defense of the Bible as revelation must be carried out inductively, by examining the evidences and building up a doctrine of Scripture from the empirical facts about the Bible, as well as from biblical statements about inspiration. In his earlier works he utilized this inductivist approach to defend the traditional evangelical doctrine of biblical inerrancy.18 In his later works he moved away from this conservative position and argued for a view of Scripture as “inerrant” only in a very loose sense. According to Pinnock, the doctrine of strict biblical inerrancy is flawed because it is based on deductions from the doctrine of inspiration rather than on an inductive study of what the Bible says about itself and of the actual phenomena of the biblical text.19

John Warwick Montgomery

John Warwick Montgomery’s numerous books and articles, years of teaching on the graduate level in the United States and France, and public debates with men like Bishop James Pike, Thomas J. Altizer, and Joseph Fletcher have earned him a prominent place as a Christian theologian, historian, lawyer, and apologist.20 Montgomery influenced Josh McDowell, through whom evidentialist apologetics gained a wide popular audience. In the 1970s and 1980s Montgomery was the leading advocate of the evidentialist approach to apologetics.

Montgomery’s apologetic system is strongly empirical, with an emphasis on the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. He regards apologetics as a kind of evangelism designed to overcome objections to the saving message of the Gospels. He seeks to do this by grounding Christianity on historically verifiable truths beginning with a demonstration of the reliability of the Gospel records as primary historical documents. He calls historians to suspend disbelief and honestly examine the evidence without prejudging it on the basis of antisupernatural bias. This line of argumentation leads to the conclusion that Jesus’ resurrection proves his divine claims to be true. Montgomery acknowledges that this kind of argument can provide only probable, not certain, conclusions, and that historical arguments, while they may provide objective grounding, do not necessarily produce subjective belief.

One of Montgomery’s most recent articulations of his evidentialist apologetic was in an essay entitled “The Jury Returns: A Juridical Defense of Christianity.”21 He contrasts the appeals to self-validating faith experiences in Eastern religions with the factual verifiability of the Christian faith: “Christianity, on the other hand, declares that the truth of its absolute claims rests squarely on certain historical facts, open to ordinary investigation. These facts relate essentially to the man Jesus, His presentation of Himself as God in human flesh, and His resurrection from the dead as proof of His deity” (319).

Whereas elsewhere he employed “standard, accepted techniques of historical analysis” to argue for the truth of these facts, in this essay Montgomery urges the application of specifically “legal reasoning and the law of evidence” to the apologetic task (320). Recall the extensive use of the courtroom model in evidentialist apologetics going back to Thomas Sherlock and Simon Greenleaf and echoed by James Orr. Montgomery’s case for Christianity begins with the reliability of the New Testament writings as historical documents. He quotes with approval Greenleaf and other legal scholars in support of the conclusion that “the competence of the New Testament documents would be established in any court of law” (322).

Given the authenticity and competency of the New Testament documents, Montgomery then defends their testimony to Jesus Christ. He cites a fourfold test for exposing or determining perjury from a legal text: (a) internal defects in the witness himself, that is, anything about the witness that would undermine his credibility; (b) external defects in the witness himself, that is, motives or reasons why the witness may be lying in this instance; (c) internal defects in the testimony itself, that is, inconsistencies in the witness’s statements; and (d) external defects in the testimony itself, that is, inconsistencies between the witness’s statements and other facts or testimonies from other witnesses.22

Montgomery applies this fourfold test within an evidentialist approach, and presents four reasons for concluding that the New Testament documents cannot be impugned with providing false testimony. (a) There is no reason to regard the New Testament writers as untrustworthy. (b) They had no motive to lie about Jesus, and indeed suffered greatly for their testimony to Jesus. (c) The Gospel accounts differ enough to be regarded as independent yet are not inconsistent with one another. (d) The New Testament accounts have been abundantly confirmed by archaeological and historical study (324-326).

Montgomery extends the juridical model even further. Had the New Testament writers tried to lie about Jesus, Montgomery argues that they would not have gotten away with it. The Jewish religious leaders function as “hostile witnesses” because of their inability to answer the apostles’ claim that Jesus had risen from the dead (327, 330). Montgomery denies the charge that the New Testament writings are to be rejected as “hearsay”—secondhand information is often accepted in both civil and criminal cases, where that information can be evaluated in some way. And he points out that the New Testament contains statements indicating that the writers are offering eyewitness testimony (330).

The next stage in Montgomery’s apologetic is his argument for the resurrection of Jesus as an historical event. We will discuss the evidentialist argument for the Resurrection in some detail in chapter 10. Here we draw attention to certain key elements of Montgomery’s presentation of that argument. The core is the “missing body” argument. If Jesus’ body didn’t rise from the dead, then someone must have stolen it (because an occupied tomb would have brought the Resurrection story to a grinding halt). But the Roman authorities would not steal the body because that might contribute to unrest; the Jewish authorities would not steal it because that would undermine their religious influence; and the disciples would not steal it and then lie about Jesus rising from the dead because that would get them into trouble with the Roman and Jewish authorities (precisely for the reasons just mentioned). By process of elimination, then, no one stole the body, and therefore the body must have been raised from the dead (331).

Admittedly such fantastic alternative explanations as Schonfield’s Passover Plot (according to which Jesus arranged to be crucified and managed to survive the ordeal long enough to convince his disciples he had risen) are barely possible. “But legal reasoning operates on probabilities, not possibilities” (332). The fact that legal reasoning cannot produce absolute demonstrative proof is not a valid objection, even though if Jesus did rise from the dead we are expected to place absolute faith in him. In matters of fact, probability is unavoidable. “And the law in every land redistributes property and takes away liberty (if not life) by verdicts and judgments rooted in the examination of evidence and probabilistic standards of proof” (323).

Given that Jesus rose from the dead, can this fact alone establish the truth of Jesus’ claims to deity? Montgomery stoutly answers in the affirmative, arguing that “the very nature of legal argument (judgments rendered on the basis of factual verdicts) rests on the ability of facts to speak for themselves” (335). He points out that the Resurrection did not occur in a factual vacuum, but was accompanied by Jesus’ own explanation of its significance as the miraculous act of God.

Not only can Jesus’ resurrection alone establish his deity, it can establish the existence of the Deity in the first place. The existence of God “then becomes the proper inference from Jesus’ resurrection as he himself explained it—not a prior metaphysical hurdle to jump in order to arrive at the proper historical and evidential interpretation of that event” (336). This last comment is aimed at classical apologetics, which argues that the existence of God needs to be established before trying to show the truth and meaning of Jesus’ resurrection. Montgomery, in fact, was one of the first evidentialists to self-consciously distinguish his apologetic method from the classical approach.

Although Montgomery is best known for his historical evidentialism, he has written very widely in apologetics and theology. One aspect of his apologetics that is not often noticed is his interest in a “literary apologetic” for the Christian gospel. Such an apologetic, he has argued, can draw from such fiction as The Lord of the Rings as pointers “to the fulfillment of mankind’s longings in the factuality of the Gospel Story.”23

Richard Swinburne

The diversity of evidentialist apologetics would not be well represented without some notice of the work of Richard Swinburne. From 1977 to 1981 Swinburne, a British philosopher, published a trilogy of books in defense of theism.24 In 1989 he launched a four-book series defending specifically Christian beliefs.25 These seven books constitute the most sophisticated evidentialist defense of Christianity to appear so far. Swinburne’s plan, as he has explained, was “to use the criteria of modern natural science, analysed with the careful rigour of modern philosophy, to show the meaningfulness and justification of Christian theology.”26 In 1996 he published Is There a God? in which he offered a more popular-level statement of his apologetic. Swinburne summarizes his argument at the beginning of this book:

Scientists, historians, and detectives observe data and proceed thence to some theory about what best explains the occurrence of these data. We can analyse the criteria which they use in reaching a conclusion that a certain theory is better supported by the data than a different theory—that is, more likely, on the basis of those data, to be true. Using those same criteria, we find that the view that there is a God explains everything we observe, not just some narrow range of data. It explains the fact that there is a universe at all, that scientific laws operate within it, that it contains conscious animals and humans with very complex intricately organized bodies, that we have abundant opportunities for developing ourselves and the world, as well as the more particular data that humans report miracles and have religious experiences. In so far as scientific causes and laws explain some of these things (and in part they do), these very causes and laws need explaining, and God’s action explains them. The very same criteria which scientists use to reach their own theories lead us to move beyond those theories to a creator God who sustains everything in existence.27

Swinburne begins his case for Christianity with the question of the coherence of the Christian conception of God,28 because if the notion of God is incoherent, there is no point in asking if there is enough evidence to justify belief in God’s existence. His goal in this stage of his apologetic is to defend theism from a priori objections that would disallow in advance the marshaling of evidence for God’s existence.29

Although Swinburne defends a form of theism, he finds it necessary to reject certain aspects of traditional or classical theism that he finds incoherent. Most significantly, he argues that God knows only what it is logically possible to know, and hence that God does not know all future events that depend on the free decisions of creatures. In keeping with this view, he denies that God is a “timeless” being, preferring to view God as everlasting.30

The most important fact about God’s nature for Swinburne’s argument is that, if God exists, he is what he is necessarily or essentially; his existence and nature are not dependent on anyone or anything else. “If, as theism maintains, there is a God who is essentially and eternally omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly free, then he will be the ultimate brute fact which explains everything else.”31

Swinburne’s central apologetic argument is that the existence of this God is “significantly more probable than not.”32 He contends that the existence of God provides a simple, powerful explanation for what we already know.

It remains passing strange that there exists anything at all. But if there is to exist anything, it is far more likely to be something with the simplicity of God than something like the universe with all its characteristics crying out for explanation without there being God to explain it. . . . The experience of so many men in their moments of religious vision corroborates what nature and history shows to be quite likely—that there is a God who made and sustains man and the universe.33

Swinburne admits that it is always possible to challenge this or that element of his or any other theist’s argument. He points out, though, that this is also true in science, history, and politics. “But life is short and we have to act on the basis of what such evidence as we have had time to investigate shows on balance to be probably true.”34

Conclusion

Although the five apologists profiled in this chapter are all identified with the evidential tradition pioneered by Joseph Butler, some distinct differences among them should not be overlooked. John Warwick Montgomery is perhaps the most thoroughly empiricist or inductivist of the five, by which we mean that inductive argument or factual investigation plays the most comprehensive role in his apologetic. He is also the only one of the five who is overtly critical of the classical apologetic tradition and its reliance on deductive argument. Yet even Montgomery rejects a pure empiricism.

James Orr, writing before the advent of distinctively Reformed apologetics, developed an approach that in some respects anticipated the presuppositionalist form of Reformed apologetics. Yet at its core, Orr’s method is evidentialist. We will discuss the relationship of Orr’s apologetic to Reformed apologetics in Part Four.

Evidentialism is, by its nature, rather eclectic. As Montgomery once remarked, “But just as there are numerous ways to skin a cat, so there are numerous ways to defend Christianity.”35 Evidentialists freely combine multiple lines of reasoning, often from widely different disciplines, in support of the Christian faith. Thus they often recast arguments from other apologetic approaches as elements in an overall evidential case for the truth of Christianity. Each evidentialist also tends to emphasize certain types of evidences that are of special interest to him, and some evidentialists are more eclectic than others. Thus Montgomery emphasizes historical evidences while Pinnock emphasizes the importance of a variety of types of evidences.

In the following chapters we will examine the evidential approach in greater detail, drawing on the writings of these five apologists and others who follow in the evidentialist tradition.

For Further Study

Abraham, William J. “Cumulative Case Arguments for Christian Theism.” In The Rationality of Religious Belief: Essays in Honour of Basil Mitchell, ed. William J. Abraham and Steven W. Holtzer, 17-37. Oxford: Clarendon, 1987. Exposition of Basil Mitchell’s form of evidentialism, with some comparisons to Swinburne; for advanced readers.

Montgomery, John Warwick, ed. Christianity for the Tough-Minded: Essays in Support of an Intellectually Defensible Religious Commitment. Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1973. Essays by Montgomery, James R. Moore, Rod Rosenbladt, and others advocating an evidentialist apologetic and taking on such wide-ranging subjects as situation ethics, Buddhism, LSD, and the Resurrection.

Wainwright, William J. “The Nature of Reason: Locke, Swinburne, and Edwards.” In Reason and the Christian Religion: Essays in Honour of Richard Swinburne, edited by Alan G. Padgett, 91-118. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994. Fruitful comparison of Swinburne’s evidentialism with the thought of John Locke and Jonathan Edwards; for advanced readers.

1Paley’s work has been reprinted many times; we refer here to William Paley, Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature (1802; reprint, Houston: St. Thomas Press, 1972).

4See especially William Lane Craig, The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus During the Deist Controversy, Texts and Studies in Religion 23 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1985).

5Locke’s epistemology is developed in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689); a convenient edition is found in Great Books of the Western World, vol. 35 (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952), 83-395. His chief apologetic work was The Reasonableness of Christianity: As Delivered in the Scriptures (1695); a recent edition is that edited by John C. Higgins-Biddle, Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). A valuable collection of Locke’s religious thought is Victor Nuovo, ed., John Locke: Writings on Religion (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

6For a brief summary of Locke’s apologetics, see Craig, Reasonable Faith, 22-23. Important studies and reference works include Richard Ashcraft, “Faith and Knowledge in Locke’s Philosophy,” in John Locke: Problems and Perspectives, ed. John W. Yolton (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1969); Vere Chappell, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Locke (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Nicholas Wolterstorff, John Locke and the Ethics of Belief, Cambridge Studies in Religion and Critical Thought, vol. 2 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Alan P. F. Sell, John Locke and the Eighteenth-Century Divines (Cardiffe: University of Wales Press, 1997); John Dunn, Locke: A Very Short Introduction, updated ed. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). A recent significant work on Locke’s political philosophy with insight into his philosophy of religion is Jeremy Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke’s Political Thought (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

7Thomas Sherlock, The Tryal of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus (London: J. Roberts, 1729), 98. This book is reprinted in its entirety in John Warwick Montgomery, ed., Jurisprudence: A Book of Readings (Strasbourg, France: International Scholarly Publishers, 1974), 339-449 (the quote appears on 436).

8Quotations in this section are taken from Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion, Introduction by Ernest C. Mossner; Milestones of Thought (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1961). Butler’s Analogy has gone through numerous editions. Works on Butler include Ernest Campbell Mossner, Bishop Butler and the Age of Reason: A Study in the History of Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1936); S. A. Grave, “Able and Fair Reasoning of Butler’s Analogy,” Church History 47 (1978): 298-307; James Rurak, “Butler’s Analogy: A Still Interesting Synthesis of Reason and Revelation,” Anglican Theological Review 62 (1980): 365-81; Ted Honderich, Butler, Arguments of the Philosophers (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986); Thomas M. Gregory, “Apologetics before and after Butler,” in Pressing Toward the Mark: Essays Commemorating Fifty Years of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, ed. Charles G. Dennison and Richard C. Gamble (Philadelphia: Committee for the Historian of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 1986), 351-367; Christopher Cunliffe, ed., Joseph Butler’s Moral and Religious Thought: Tercentenary Essays (Oxford: Clarendon; New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

10His best-known book was originally entitled The Christian View of God and the World as Centering in the Incarnation. The standard edition is The Christian View of God and the World, corrected reprint of 3rd ed. (New York: Scribner, 1897; reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948; Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1989). His other books include The Faith of a Modern Christian (New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910); The Faith that Persuades (reprint, New York: Harper & Row, 1977); The Resurrection of Jesus (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1909; reprint, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1965); and The Virgin Birth of Christ (New York: Scribner, 1907).

11All parenthetical references in this section are to Orr, Christian View of God and the World.

18Notably A Defense of Biblical Infallibility; “The Inspiration of Scripture and the Authority of Jesus Christ,” in God’s Inerrant Word: An International Symposium on the Trustworthiness of Scripture, ed. John Warwick Montgomery (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1974), 201-218.

19Pinnock, The Scripture Principle, especially 57-59. On Pinnock’s views on inerrancy, see Rex A. Koivisto, “Clark Pinnock and Inerrancy: A Change in Truth Theory?” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 24 (1981): 138-51; and Pinnock, “A Response to Rex Koivisto,” 153-55, in the same volume.

20Montgomery’s most important apologetics works are The Shape of the Past: A Christian Response to Secular Philosophies of History (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1962; reprint, 1975); History and Christianity (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1971; reprint, Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1986); Where Is History Going? Essays in Support of the Historical Truth of the Christian Revelation (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1969); The Suicide of Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1970); How Do We Know There Is a God? (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1973); and Faith Founded on Fact: Essays in Evidential Apologetics (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1978). He is also the editor of Christianity for the Tough-minded: Essays in Support of an Intellectually Defensible Religious Commitment (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1973) and Evidence for Faith: Deciding the God Question, Cornell Symposium on Evidential Apologetics, 1986 (Dallas: Probe Books, 1991; distributed by Word Publishing).

21In Evidence for Faith, 319-41; parenthetical references in this section are to this essay.

10. Evidentialist Apologetics: Faith Founded on Fact

The title of John Warwick Montgomery’s best-known book, Faith Founded on Fact, well illustrates the methodological perspective of the evidentialist model of apologetics. Evidentialists believe that “the facts speak for themselves”—that the best approach to defending the Christian faith is simply to present the factual evidence for the crucial claims of Christ. This rather simple way of stating their position, of course, does not do justice to the sophisticated way that evidentialist scholars have developed a philosophy of fact to undergird the apologetic task. In this chapter, then, we shall consider in some detail the evidentialist system of apologetics in order to come to terms with the distinctive way it responds to the challenges facing the Christian apologist.

Methods for Discovering Truth

Evidentialism in Christian apologetics seeks to show the truth of Christianity by demonstrating its factuality. Whereas classical apologetics characteristically regards logic or reason as the primary criterion of truth, evidentialism characteristically assigns this priority to fact. (This difference can be understood largely a matter of emphasis; of course, both classical apologists and evidentialists consider reason and fact to be both essential to apologetic argumentation.) The meaning of “fact” in evidentialism is quite broad. Bernard Ramm, for example, classifies the scope of Christian evidences under the three categories of material fact (historical events, documents, archaeological artifacts), supernatural fact (events or phenomena that can only be explained by “invoking the category of the supernatural”), and experiential fact (individual and social phenomena).1 This empirical approach makes use of a wide variety of concrete evidences, although some, like the historical evidence for the resurrection of Christ, are more extensively developed and emphasized.

Two Kinds of “Evidentialism”

Evidentialism in evangelical Christian apologetics should be carefully distinguished from epistemological evidentialism, which adheres to W. K. Clifford’s dictum that “it is wrong, everywhere, always, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”2 Clifford’s maxim has rightly been questioned from a variety of perspectives. For one thing, the statement itself is not one for which we can even imagine what would constitute “sufficient evidence”; what would count for or against evidence for the maxim? Second, it establishes what we might call an epistemology of suspicion: the belief that we should consider all beliefs false unless proven true by sufficient evidence. But why should the burden of proof be placed on a belief rather than on its denial? If I believe that the world exists as a reality independent of my senses, I am perfectly right to adhere to this belief in the absence of reasons or evidence to the contrary.

Apologetical evidentialism does not assume epistemological evidentialism, and most if not all evidentialist apologists would reject Clifford’s maxim. If we were to formulate a maxim for evidentialist apologetics, it would be something like this: it is wrong, everywhere, always, and for anyone, to tell someone else to believe something other than on the basis of evidence. In other words, evidentialism in apologetics places a certain burden of proof on the apologist to show non-Christians why it is rational to believe in Christ. At the same time, evidentialists claim that the truth of the Christian message cannot be successfully or properly denied without a fair consideration of the factual basis for the Christian truth claim. Henceforth when we refer to evidentialism, we are referring to the apologetic approach.

Although apologetical evidentialists generally do not subscribe to epistemological evidentialism, they sometimes do argue that people ought to have evidence or reasons for the beliefs they hold in matters of supreme importance. Dan Story, for example, contends, “If you and I are to bet our eternity on a particular religion, we had better have reasons for why we believe as we do.”3 The point here is to press non-Christians to inquire whether they have good reasons for believing what they believe instead of believing in Christ.

Priority of Fact and Induction

Although there are different varieties of evidentialist apologetics, they have several crucial aspects in common. First, evidentialism is primarily inductive, rather than deductive, in its logical form. Inductive arguments reason from as many facts, or data, as can be mustered to a conclusion that is shown to be supported in some way by the facts. By contrast, deductive arguments, such as those favored in classical apologetics, reason from as few facts, or premises, as are needed to a conclusion that is shown to follow from the facts. Evidentialism makes induction, rather than deduction, the primary form of apologetic argumentation.

We say “primarily” because deduction does play a role in evidentialist argument (as of course induction plays a role in classical apologetics), and it would be a mistake to characterize evidentialism as relying solely on inductive argument. Even John Warwick Montgomery, whose advocacy of empirical method is more thoroughgoing than perhaps any other noted evidentialist, denies that all knowledge is gained solely through inductive reasoning—a position known as inductivism. He recognizes that there is actually a complementary interplay of deduction and induction in investigative operations, as well as a second level of induction that C. S. Peirce called imaginative retroduction or abduction. This involves an interaction between concepts, hypotheses, and theories and facts, observations, and experiments through imagination and logic.4

Nevertheless, evidentialists insist that verification of the central claims of Christianity unavoidably involves induction. Moreover, at least some evidentialists are dissatisfied with the primarily deductive approach used in classical apologetics. They insist that a sound apologetic can and must consist primarily in an appeal to the facts. For Montgomery the facts take precedence over rationality and should be viewed as essentially self-interpreting. He explicitly rejects the claim that one must first establish the truth of a worldview and then view the facts within that worldview context. Rather, he insists, the facts determine the worldview.

Facts are not made of wax, capable of infinite molding from the pressure of interpretive world-views. . . . Facts ultimately arbitrate interpretations, not the reverse, at least where good science (and not bad philosophy) is being practiced. . . . If one removes his nose from philosophical speculation and breathes the fresher air of societal and personal decision-making, he will find abundant illustration that facts must carry their own interpretations (i.e., must arbitrate among diverse interpretations of the data).5

More recently he reiterated this point in an essay defending a “juridical” approach to apologetics—one that adopts legal principles of evidence as the methodological basis for verifying the Christian truth claims. He argues that “the very nature of legal argument (judgments rendered on the basis of factual verdicts) rests on the ability of facts to speak for themselves.”6

The priority assigned to factual evidence over against rational deduction does not mean that evidentialists are critical of reason or logic. According to Montgomery, “The law of contradiction and the logical thinking based upon it are not optional. They must be employed for any meaningful thought, theological or otherwise.”7 However, evidentialists are suspicious of logic employed in a speculative manner, and they emphasize that rational arguments are only as good as the facts with which they work. Logical coherence or consistency is at best a negative test for truth, because it is possible to construct a coherent worldview that is actually false. Montgomery observes that “the greatest of the world’s madmen have held the most consistent delusions,”8 and illustrates his concern in an amusing parable about a man who was convinced he was dead.

His concerned wife and friends sent him to the friendly neighborhood psychiatrist. The psychiatrist determined to cure him by convincing him of one fact that contradicted his belief that he was dead. The fact that the psychiatrist settled on was the simple truth that dead men do not bleed, and he put the patient to work reading medical texts, observing autopsies, etc. After weeks of effort, the patient finally said: “All right, all right! You’ve convinced me. Dead men do not bleed.” Whereupon the psychiatrist stuck him in the arm with a needle, and the blood flowed. The man looked with a contorted, ashen face and cried: “Good Lord! Dead men bleed after all!”

Montgomery concludes that the moral of the story is “that if you hold unsound presuppositions with sufficient tenacity, facts will make no difference to you at all.”9 His solution to this problem is to urge people to abandon any presuppositions that would close their minds to potential facts, whether they be metaphysical assumptions that prejudge the possibility of certain kinds of facts or methodological assumptions that preclude the discovery of certain kinds of facts.

Moreover, some evidentialists have argued that logical coherence or consistency is from one perspective faulty even as a negative test for truth. They point out that assigning priority to rational deductive logic can actually undermine the apologist’s position because of the paradoxical nature of central Christian teachings. Montgomery, a Lutheran, follows Martin Luther in asserting that Christianity involves antinomies. An antinomy is an apparently intractable contradiction between two ideas, both of which we have good reason to accept as true (for example, predestination and free will, or God as one Being and three Persons). Such humanly irresolvable paradoxes are to be believed, according to Montgomery, because we have evidence from Scripture that they are true, not because they pass the test of logical consistency.

In defense of the rationality of believing such antinomies, Montgomery points out that antinomies exist in science as well as in theology. He asserts that “to blast other systems for internal inconsistencies does not necessarily destroy them, since in a real sense life is bigger than logic (the paradoxical wave-particle character of light does not destroy the empirically established evidence of light’s characteristics or the physics that investigate it—and the paradoxical character of the Trinity surely doesn’t destroy the Biblical evidence for God’s trinitarian nature or the validity of Christian faith in the Triune God!).”10

Probable Character of Evidentialist Arguments

Evidential apologists of all stripes hold in common a second crucial aspect: the conclusions of the apologetic arguments they employ are shown to be probable rather than certain. This follows from the inductive nature of the arguments typically employed. Inductive reasoning assembles facts and argues that a particular conclusion offers the best or most probable explanation of the facts. Such reasoning does not absolutely close the door on other possible explanations of the facts, and for that reason inductive arguments do not attain certainty for their conclusions.

This lack of certainty is one of the most commonly criticized aspects of the evidentialist approach. If one concludes that God probably exists, or that Jesus most likely rose from the dead, how does that provide an adequate basis for the absolute commitment of faith in Jesus Christ to which people are summoned by the gospel? Evidentialists respond to this complaint on two levels.

On one level they insist that the lack of rational certainty is dictated by the nature of the Christian message. For Montgomery the probabilistic character of apologetic argument is an unavoidable result of the fact that the Christian faith centers on historical events. While he admits that his evidential apologetic leads only to a “high level of probability,” he points out that we never have absolute rational certainty in our knowledge of the real world.11 His argument “is not a rational proof in the sense of a demonstration in pure mathematics or formal logic; rather, it is an empirical argument based upon the application of historical method to an allegedly objective event. Thus it provides no more than probable evidence for the truth of the Christian world view.”12 For Montgomery, apodictic certainty is possible only in deductive arguments that proceed from self-evident axioms. No arguments that appeal to facts from the real world can furnish mathematically certain conclusions. But while empirical proofs fall short of certainty, all factual decisions in life are based on such proofs. “Historians, and indeed all of us, must make decisions constantly, and the only adequate guide is probability (since absolute certainty lies only in the realms of pure logic and mathematics, where, by definition, one encounters no matters of fact at all).”13 Probabilistic arguments for the truth of Christianity, then, “cannot be summarily dismissed just because a vital religious question is at issue.”14

On another level, though, evidentialism affirms that a kind of certainty is possible. Evidentialists do not claim that the most or best we can ever say is that God “probably exists” or that Jesus “most likely” rose from the dead. For them, apologetic arguments are designed to show that their conclusions are at least probably true. That they are certainly true can also be known, according to evidentialists, but not by argument. Such certainty is a characteristic of faith and is made possible by the work of the Holy Spirit. There is no contradiction in claiming that something is probably true (on the basis of a particular argument) and also certainly true (on some other basis). After all, if something is certainly true, then it is also probably true—with the probability of 1, or 100 percent.

Content-Neutral Methods

The third point on which all evidential apologists agree is that evidentialism seeks to employ methods that are in principle acceptable to non-Christians as a means of convincing them of the truth of Christianity. These methods are modeled on those used by both Christians and non-Christians in various disciplines. The evidentialist goal is to avoid gratuitous or disputable assumptions about the nature of things. Montgomery, for example, prefers the empirical method because the truth-discovering presuppositions of empiricism assume as little as possible while providing optimal conditions for objective discovery. He rejects apologetic approaches that begin with dogmatic, truth-asserting presuppositions, whether of a philosophical theism (as in classical apologetics) or of the biblical Christian theism (as in Reformed apologetics).

Properly, we should start not with substantive, “content” presuppositions about the world (e.g., the axiom of revelation), which gratuitously prejudge the nature of what is, but with heuristic, methodological presuppositions that permit us to discover what the world is like—and (equally important) what it is not like. Such are the a prioris of empirical method, which are not only heuristic but unavoidably necessary in all of our endeavors to distinguish synthetic truth from falsity.15

In other words, Montgomery begins with presuppositions of method rather than of substantive content, which already assume a body of truth.

Evidentialists believe it crucial to employ methods modeled on those of disciplines other than Christian theology or apologetics, so that non-Christians can understand and appreciate the validity of the arguments. As Montgomery puts it, “Objective empirical evidence for Jesus Christ and his message is the only truly valid Christian apologetic possible, for it alone is subject to the canons of evidence employed in other fields of endeavor.”16

Montgomery himself uses both historical methods and legal or juridical methods. These methods are closely related, because in fact legal evidences are a form of historical inquiry, pursuing an accurate understanding of past events related to cases brought before a court. In the previous chapter we surveyed a recent articulation by Montgomery of a juridical model of evidentialist apologetics. We also noted that such apologists as Thomas Sherlock and Simon Greenleaf developed evidentialism with a heavy reliance on the legal evidence model. Francis Beckwith, a former student of Montgomery, also prefers the legal evidence approach, especially in its defense of belief in miracles. Beckwith notes that miracle claims rely heavily on eyewitness testimony, and the legal model is particularly useful in evaluating such testimony.17 Lawyers and professors of law, most recently Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson, have also used legal reasoning to evaluate the arguments for evolution.18

Another model of evidentialist apologetics makes use of the scientific method. Dan Story, a former student of Montgomery, speaks for many evidentialists when he expresses a preference for the scientific method, precisely because it makes the truth of the Christian position verifiable for all people. “Truth, if it is to be acknowledged and accepted by all people as universal truth, must stand up to critical scrutiny; it must be able to be tested.” Such criteria as authority, common sense, rationalism, and pragmatism cannot be used to discover the truth, but only to confirm what we have already learned to be the truth. “We are left with only one remaining truth-test. It is the only valid and reliable way to determine truth: the scientific method. . . . The [naturalistic] scientific worldview is subject to many distortions that evolve out of its erroneous presuppositions. But I am suggesting that the scientific method for discovering truth is the most reliable method because it alone can be tested.”19

While Montgomery typically does not present apologetics as employing the scientific method per se, he does argue that an evidentialist apologetic is based on the same methodological assumptions as the scientific method. “In our modern world we have found that the presuppositions of empirical method best fulfil this condition; but note that we are operating only with the presuppositions of scientific method, not with the rationalistic assumptions of Scientism (‘the Religion of Science’).”20

These empirical presuppositions are threefold: (1) epistemologically, knowledge is possible; (2) metaphysically, the universe is regular; and (3) ethically, the results of empirical investigation will be reported honestly.21 The evidentialist uses these presuppositions as methodological assumptions that justify the empirical investigation of the universe rather than (as in classical apologetics) as axioms or premises from which the theistic worldview is deduced.

The Postmodern Challenge to Evidentialism

Evangelical evidentialist apologetics seeks to present evidence for the truth of Christianity using methods of inquiry that are in principle acceptable to non-Christians. This methodological approach has come under frontal assault from postmodernism. In essence, postmodernism is a philosophical movement that is rooted in modernism but proclaims the bankruptcy of certain aspects of modern thought. In particular, it denies the modernist belief that there is an objective truth about the world that can be discovered using reason. According to postmodernists, truth is subjective, not objective. Our knowledge of reality is a construction that we build up as we look at the world through our eyes and through the assumptions and experiences of our communities. This is true whether we are reading the Bible, watching the news, hearing testimony and arguments in a criminal court case, studying history, or doing science.

The old rationalist, modernist ideal was of a single, objective method of gaining more and more complete and accurate knowledge of the real world in the disciplines of history, law, science, and theology. Postmodernists argue that this ideal is to be replaced by a methodological pluralism in which there is no one right way to look at the world. And therein lies the problem for evidentialism: if there is no universally recognized way of determining the truth, the evidentialist project of presenting evidences using the accepted methods of established disciplines cannot get off the ground because such accepted methods no longer exist. Objective methods of discovering truth cannot be used with people who believe that “truth isn’t discovered, but manufactured.”22

In general, evidentialists make common cause with classical apologists in rejecting outright the relativism and subjectivism of postmodernism, but both acknowledge that the rationalistic ideal of modernism deserves criticism as well. People cannot find out the truth about God or any other ultimate issue in life through human reasoning or investigation. The postmodernist is thus left with no way at all to attain ultimate truth. For the Christian, on the other hand, the failure of modernism leaves us with revelation as the only viable way to know the truth about God and his world.

Moreover, evidentialists, like classical apologists, stress the indispensability of reason as a means by which we are able to recognize God’s revelation. While these apologists would deny that we can discover the truth about God on our own, they do contend that we can “discover” the truth of God’s revelation by applying the methods of such established disciplines as law, history, and science to the facts of Christianity. In order to make this case classical apologists directly confront what they regard as the self-defeating, irrational character of postmodernism. That is, they argue that postmodernism is forced to make absolutist statements denying absolute truth.

Evidentialists endorse the criticism that postmodernism is self-defeating, but their chief objection to it is that in everyday matters people do not accept a pluralistic, relativistic view of truth. Virtually all people are outraged when neo-Nazi groups claim that the Holocaust never happened. So much for the postmodern claim that history is whatever people construct it to be! When the Challenger exploded, no one would have been satisfied had NASA issued a statement claiming that the cause of the accident was different for different people; everyone demanded to know exactly what happened, and why. In short, evidentialists argue that while postmodernism may seem formidable in theory, in practice it may to a great extent be ignored when presenting the evidence for the truth of the gospel. Dan Story, for example, concludes:

The majority of people on the street still view the world through modernist eyes. Even people who openly endorse postmodernism and argue for relativism do not live consistently with this philosophy—especially when it conflicts with their self-interests.Although religious pluralism and moral relativism are quickly becoming ingrained in modern culture, the majority of people still think in terms of absolutes and accept the reality of logic and reason. These people need their intellectual obstacles to faith removed.23

The Defense of Theology

For evidentialists, apologetics is a discipline that seeks to present the factual evidence or basis for the Christian faith in its every aspect. They join all apologists in seeing the nature of apologetics as dictated by the nature of the Christian faith, but they argue that this means that Christianity requires an evidential apologetic. They offer two reasons, broadly speaking, for this assertion.

First, they contend that since the Bible itself is an historical object, its content can only be properly evaluated when objective history is taken seriously. Montgomery quotes with approval George I. Mavrodes’s statement, “Whenever the Bible forms a link in an epistemological chain, then sensory contact with the Bible must form the very next link.”24 The inductive method is the “only entrée to verifiable knowledge of the external world,”25 and the Bible is part of that world. Moreover, the essential and distinctive truth claims of the Bible are historical claims, assertions that certain events took place in the past. This simple fact forces inductive argument upon us.

Second, evidentialists contend that apologetic arguments in Scripture are evidential. Montgomery lists four types of these arguments: miracle (especially the Resurrection), fulfilled prophecy, inner experience or subjective immediacy, and natural theology (of an empirical kind).26 In particular he points to the evidential use of the Resurrection in the Christian apologetic of the first-century church. The apostles argued for the truth of the Resurrection by appealing to known facts and eyewitness testimonies, and by correlating this empirical evidence with the Old Testament prophecies fulfilled by Christ’s death and resurrection (for example, Acts 2:22-36; 26:26). On the basis of the apostolic testimony, those of us who did not personally witness the Resurrection ought nevertheless to believe it (John 20:24-29). In order to commend the apostolic testimony to people today, we must be prepared to give them credible reasons to accept that testimony.

Admittedly, an evidentialist apologetic cannot provide absolute proof or compel faith, but this, evidentialists argue, is as it should be. “Absolute proof of the truth of Christ’s claims is available only in personal relationship with Him; but contemporary man has every right to expect us to offer solid reasons for making such a total commitment.”27 The apologetic task is not to construct a rational substitute for faith but to provide a factual ground for faith. Thus, although the facts cannot compel faith, they can leave people without a legitimate excuse for not coming to faith. Evidentialists recognize, as do all other apologists, that human beings in their sinfulness can reject the truth to which the facts point. But Montgomery warns, “If you reject Him it will not be because of a deficiency of evidence but because of a perversity of will.”28

Evidentialist John A. Bloom expands on this idea that evidence does not compel faith by considering a number of perspectives on the question, “Why isn’t the evidence clearer?”29 Bloom argues that “the God of the Bible is not seeking to make His presence compellingly obvious” because then human beings would not express their moral and spiritual attitudes freely. Furthermore, “because men may distort data to their seeming advantage, they will tend to obscure any evidence which hints that there is an authority or power greater than themselves, especially one which they cannot control and to which they should be subject.”30

Evidentialist apologetics seeks to correlate and interpret empirical facts to show that the Christian faith is true. In turn, evidentialists understand the task of theology to be that of building on the conclusion of the truth of Christianity by correlating and interpreting the facts of Scripture. Such theology itself has an apologetic function insofar as the theologian must critique theological systems that undermine the Christian truth claims by reinterpreting in corrupt forms the Christian message. Here the facts to which the evidentialist theologian appeals are the propositional statements of the Bible. This does not, from the evidentialist’s perspective, represent a shift in method. The apologist appeals to facts about and from the Bible to show that Christianity is true; the theologian appeals to facts of the Bible to show what Christianity means.

In a paper entitled “The Theologian’s Craft: A Discussion of Theory Formation and Theory Testing in Theology,”31 Montgomery compares scientific and theological methodologies using Karl Popper’s work on model formation. The theologian, in this view, engages in forming and testing theories concerning the divine, and the source of revelational data for this kind of model formation is Scripture. These theological models must be repeatedly tested against the data of Scripture as interpreted through the application of a sound hermeneutic.

On the basis of this theological method, Montgomery critiques various non-Christian and sub-Christian teachings that deviate from historical Christianity. In the opening essay of The Suicide of Christian Theology, he traces the shift in Christian theology since the eighteenth century away from a revelatory base to current subjective uncertainty. After examining the influences of deism, naturalism, and humanism on early twentieth-century Protestant and Catholic modernism, he discusses Barth’s attempt to restore Christian doctrine through a dialectic of yes and no and the subsequent developments in the theologies of Bultmann, Tillich, and the “death of God” movement. Montgomery then argues that “the only hope for a resurrected theology lies in a recovery of confidence in the historical Christ and in the Scriptures He stamped with approval as God’s Word.”32 The “keystone” of this resurrected theology is “an unqualified acceptance of the resurrected Christ,” whose reality is validated by the historical facts.33

The evidentialist insistence that theological models, as well as apologetic arguments, must be testable is not a mere abstraction. Evidentialists have demonstrated their willingness to reassess traditional theological models. Perhaps most notably, several leading evidentialists have argued that certain features of the classical view of God’s nature as formulated by such theologians as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas need to be rethought or even abandoned. For example, Richard Swinburne contends that God exists everlastingly in time rather than in a timeless eternity.34 He also holds that God is “omniscient” in the sense that He knows everything that it is logically possible to know—and that this qualification excludes future actions of free creatures, including human beings.35 Clark Pinnock holds to essentially the same views.36 William Lane Craig, whose apologetic approach is essentially classical but with strong evidentialist leanings, adopts a compromise or middle-ground position between classical theism and the neoclassical theism of Swinburne and Pinnock. In his view, God was outside time before He created the world, but since the beginning of the universe (which was the beginning of time itself) God has existed in time. Furthermore, Craig argues that God can and does know all future acts of free creatures because God knows what each person would do in every possible world.37

There are few evidentialists in the Reformed or Calvinistic theological tradition (which does include many classical apologists as well as adherents of a Reformed apologetic). Most evidentialists are Arminian (a variety of evangelicalism that is non-predestinarian); this was true of Joseph Butler and is true of Pinnock and Craig. James Orr, a notable evidentialist from a century ago, was Reformed, and significantly his apologetic method in certain respects resembles the Reformed apologetic tradition. John Warwick Montgomery is neither Arminian nor Calvinist; he is, rather, a conservative Lutheran. Without minimizing the differences, this puts Montgomery somewhat closer to the Reformed tradition than most other contemporary evidentialists.

Critical Use of Philosophy

Evidentialists generally disapprove of the kind of philosophical apologetics that seeks to construct a deductive system of proof for Christianity. This does not mean, however, that evidentialism is hostile to all philosophy. Indeed, in recent years some of the most influential evidentialists have been philosophers, notably Swinburne, profiled in chapter 8. Other philosophers who advocate an evidentialist apologetic include Francis Beckwith (a former student of Montgomery)38 and Douglas Geivett.39 In addition, J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, two of the most influential contemporary evangelical apologists, are philosophers whose apologetic approach has affinities with both classical and evidentialist apologetics.

The difference between classical apologists and evidentialists may be identified from one perspective as the difference between two broad conceptions of the task of philosophy.40 The speculative or constructive view of philosophy understands that task to be to construct a comprehensive view of knowledge, reality, and values. In this conception philosophy is a discipline of thought in its own right and yields knowledge not found in other disciplines. This view dominated Western philosophy for most of its history; it is the view of philosophy presupposed by the work of both Plato and Aristotle, and many if not most of the other great philosophers of the past. It fits naturally with the classical approach to apologetics, which has maintained a close relationship between apologetics and what is now known as philosophy of religion. Thomas Aquinas is the paradigm case of a Christian philosopher-apologist whose work utilized philosophy as a means to develop a comprehensive world-and-life view.

In the twentieth century a number of philosophers questioned this historic understanding of the task of philosophy. In its place they have contended for the analytical or critical conception of philosophy, according to which the task of philosophy is to clarify the meaning of knowledge claims and to assess the rationality of those claims. In this conception philosophy is, strictly speaking, a “second-order” discipline that does not yield knowledge of its own but simply examines and clarifies the knowledge claims of other, “first-order” disciplines. For most philosophers who advocate this view, the primary (if not the only) first-order disciplines are the sciences, including both the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.) and the human sciences (psychology, sociology, history, etc.).

Evidentialists generally reject the constructive view and embrace the analytical or critical view, for in their apologetic the sciences provide the evidence for the truth claims of Christianity. The role of philosophy for evidentialists can be viewed both negatively and positively. Negatively, they view philosophy as useful for critiquing anti-Christian presuppositions and philosophies that prejudice people against the factual case for Christianity. Positively, some evidentialists also use philosophy to assess the evidential support for the Christian position of the knowledge produced by the sciences.

Montgomery himself provides a clear example of the negative use. He believes that contemporary analytical philosophy’s verification principle (that to be meaningful, a claim must be verifiable) makes an “inestimable contribution to epistemology.” The implementation of this principle means that “vast numbers of apparently sensible truth-claims can be readily identified as unverifiable, and time and energy can thereby be saved for intellectual pursuits capable of yielding testable conclusions.”41 Rational arguments for the truth of a religion, including many of the traditional arguments of the classical apologetical kind, are inadequate because they fall short of true verification. He contends that instead apologetics must focus on verifiable truth claims. “Objective empirical evidence for Jesus Christ and his message is the only truly valid Christian apologetic possible, for it alone is subject to the canons of evidence employed in other fields of endeavor.”42

Since the evidence for Christianity must come from first-order disciplines such as history and science, the main role of philosophy for the evidentialist is to expose and critique what Montgomery calls “bad philosophy.” Evidentialists critique non-Christian worldviews and philosophies, not primarily by demonstrating logical incoherence (as in classical apologetic critiques), but by showing that these systems of thought are resistant to or incompatible with the facts. Examples of such critiques can be found in Christianity for the Tough-Minded, a compendium that includes critiques by evidentialist apologists of a number of nontheistic positions in philosophy, science, ethics, religion, psychology, and literature.43 These include the rationalistic humanism of Bertrand Russell, the evolutionary humanism of Julian Huxley, the agnosticism of Franz Kafka, and the objectivism of Ayn Rand, as well as existential psychology and fundamental Buddhism. Such critiques are designed to show how the Christian position makes better sense of the relevant scientific, moral, historical, and experiential data than the interpretations derived from alternate worldviews.

Although evidentialists commonly rely on philosophical reasoning to critique anti-Christian philosophies, some have used these same methods to mount the case for Christianity. Specifically, some evidentialist philosophers have employed modern philosophical analyses of inductive argument as tools for displaying the evidence for Christian truth claims.

Richard Swinburne employs a sophisticated formulation of probability theory (that he himself has further developed) in his apologetic for belief in God. He argues for the probability that God exists with the same criteria used in science to assess whether a particular hypothesis or theory is likely to be true, and identifies four such criteria. A good theory has predictive power: it leads us to expect certain things to occur which in fact do occur. Second, a good theory is simple – it does not needlessly multiply explanations. Swinburne has given much attention to arguing that simplicity is evidence of truth44 and to defending the claim that God constitutes a simple explanation for everything.45 Third, a good theory fits our background knowledge – it squares with things we already know. Fourth, a good theory has explanatory power – it explains things better than any rival theory. The more these four things are true of a theory, the more probable it is to correspond to reality.46

Swinburne argues that the theory that God exists meets these four criteria sufficiently to justify the conclusion that God probably does in fact exist. He seeks to make this case in a very formal way by defining the “probability” of a particular truth claim by way of a mathematically expressed theorem of confirmation theory known as Bayes’s theorem. This theorem uses the following definitions as its building blocks:

P = the probability that something is true

h = the hypothesis or theory

e = the evidence (that is, phenomena or observations to be explained)

k = general background knowledge of the world

From these definitions, the following complex terms are derived:

P(h/k) = prior probability of h (its probability before the evidence is considered)

P(e/k) = prior probability of e (probability of the evidence itself if we do not assume h)

P(e/h.k) = probability of e if h is true, given k (the predictive power of h)

P(h/e.k) = probability of h in view of both e and k (the probability of h)

For a comprehensive explanation such as the claim that God exists, P(h/k), or the prior probability of h, will be in effect the simplicity of the claim. Bayes’s theorem runs as follows:

P(h/e.k) = P(e/h.k)/P(e/k) x P(h/k)

Stated in layman’s terms, Bayes’s theorem holds that the more a truth claim can explain, the better it can explain things; and the simpler it can explain things, the more likely that truth claim is to be true. Evidentialists who use Bayes’s theorem do so in order to present an objective, quantifiable measure of the probability that a truth claim is true.

Although most evidentialists use a less formal approach than Swinburne’s, many agree with his use of the concept of explanatory power to give some rigor to the claim that the Christian position is supported by the evidence. Consider, for example, the apologetic developed by Douglas Geivett, who favors a cumulative-case approach that “proceeds from the general to the particular” (93).47 This should not be confused with reasoning from the general to the particular, which is deductive reasoning. Geivett is speaking of reasoning inductively, beginning “with very general considerations that require explanation” and proceeding to “more particular features of this world.” As the considerations become more specific and particular, the explanations or conclusions become correspondingly more specific and thus more complete (93-94). As a result, “the theistic conclusion comes to enjoy greater support as more and more features of reality are found to be best explained theistically. In this respect it is similar to the approaches of Mitchell and Swinburne” (95).

Geivett’s argument is not only a cumulative-case argument, it is an “inference to the best explanation.” As such it is based on premises that are in turn dependent “upon the inductive strength of various inferences.” Moreover, “this argument gets its force from considerations of the comparative explanatory power of alternate hypotheses” (95). Here Geivett’s position appears especially close to that of Swinburne.

The use of probability theory has enabled evidentialists to overcome certain arguments against the Christian faith that purport to show that Christian truth claims are inherently improbable. Francis Beckwith, for example, has urged that one must not use the concept of probability in such a way as to disallow any amount of evidence to establish the reality of a particular event. Even if an event is in and of itself less probable than other kinds of events, if there is sufficient evidence for the event in question it should be believed. Beckwith gives several examples. Reliable sources reported that on one occasion fifteen people all happened for different reasons to show up late to a church choir rehearsal, thus narrowly avoiding being in the church when it was accidentally destroyed in an explosion. A royal flush is an extremely rare poker hand, but if several competent witnesses see a player get such a hand it should be believed. A woman might commit only one murder in her life, but her defense attorney cannot contend that her not committing murder is so commonplace in her life that her committing murder must be regarded as a priori unlikely. Beckwith therefore urges that probability not be applied to unusual specific events, such as miracles, in a way that overrides the actual evidence for those events.48

In Swinburne’s terms, Beckwith’s point amounts to saying that the prior probability of h is only one of several factors in determining the actual probability of h; one must also factor in the explanatory and predictive power of h and its simplicity as an explanation of the evidence. Thus, even though a miracle is a highly improbable type of event, if accepting the report of a miracle will explain it a great deal better and more simply than any other explanation, one has rational grounds for concluding that the miracle probably did occur.

Christianity Vindicated by Science

Up until the eighteenth century, apologetics was modeled on philosophy, which was generally deductive in form. “Philosophy” until that time was a much broader term than it is now, and included the study of the natural world (what was called “natural philosophy”). In turn, the word “science” was understood in its common Latin sense as scientia, knowledge. As disciplines of study became more specialized, the sciences emerged as distinct branches of knowledge increasingly differentiated from philosophy by their inductive, empirical method. It was natural, then, for apologists to begin modeling their apologetic after the increasingly successful disciplines of empirical science.

The technological revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have made the coherence of the Christian worldview with modern science one of the most significant issues in Christian apologetics. A widespread disdain for and distrust of abstract reasoning in general and deductive philosophical argument in particular have brought the classical theistic arguments into disrepute. In place of these, Christian apologists have increasingly relied on empirical, scientific arguments for the existence of God and in defense of the biblical worldview. Such natural theologians as Joseph Butler and William Paley set the pattern for such arguments. For evidentialists, the traditional theistic arguments, if they are used at all, must be recast in empirical form and be used to build up a case for theism from the facts of nature or human experience. For example, in his Systematic Theology J. Oliver Buswell, Jr., drew on the “inductive probability reasonings” in Aquinas’s theistic arguments to develop a modern defense of theism.49 Richard Swinburne has reformulated as inductive, probabilistic arguments the cosmological and teleological arguments, as well as the arguments for God from mind and morality—all of which, except for the teleological, were classically formulated as deductive arguments.50

Although Montgomery’s apologetic thrust is primarily historical, he also offers his own version of some of the theistic proofs. The fundamental argument for him is what Frederick C. Copleston called the argument from contingency. In essence, this states that existence cannot be accounted for without a meaningless infinite regress unless there is a being that contains within itself the reason for its existence, that is, a self-existent being. Montgomery, however, prefers a more concrete, empirical version of this argument. He uses the second law of thermodynamics to illustrate the contingency argument, maintaining that the entire universe can be viewed as a closed system that, left to itself, would go to a state of maximum entropy (disorder).51 Without divine intervention, this irreversible process will lead to the heat death of the universe at a finite time in the future. Thus, if the universe were uncreated and eternal, it would already have reached maximum entropy. Montgomery adds that “this a posteriori argument from contingency is empirically grounded in testable experience; it is neither a disguised form of the highly questionable ontological argument, which asserts a priori that God’s essence establishes his existence, nor an attempt at allegedly ‘synthetic a priori’ reasoning.”52

Other Christian apologists, including an increasing number trained in the sciences, agree with Montgomery’s approach of developing an inductive, evidential apologetic that appeals to scientific fact. Several of the essays in the Cornell Symposium volume Evidence for Faith represent this trend. Robert C. Newman, for example, in an article entitled “The Evidence of Cosmology,” argues that the astronomical evidence is such that “the universe is most naturally understood as created.” The theory that the universe is eternal (and therefore uncreated) is “controlled by other considerations than scientific data,” and for that reason is less probable. It should be noted that the same weakness applies, in Newman’s opinion, to the young-earth model of creationism that views the universe as only a few thousand years old. Both the eternal-universe model and the young-universe model begin with their presupposed doctrine and then “interpret the data to fit.”53

A similar position is taken by the old-earth creationist Hugh Ross, an astronomer turned evidentialist apologist. As head of Reasons to Believe,54 a parachurch ministry focusing on scientific apologetics, Ross has written a number of books advocating a scientifically oriented evidentialism.55 In his apologetic the cosmological and teleological arguments are expressed in thoroughly scientific, rather than philosophical, terms. Ross argues that an apologetic that is not based firmly on the scientific as well as the biblical facts will not be effective in reaching educated non-Christians. He contends specifically that the young-earth form of creationism is so scientifically disreputable that its affirmation by many Christians discourages “a large segment of society from taking seriously the call to faith in Christ.”56 Given that “no contradiction can exist between the words of the Bible and the facts of nature,” Ross concludes that any apparent conflicts between the two are due to misinterpretation of the Bible or the facts of nature, and that further research will resolve such apparent conflicts.57

In general, evidentialists tend to hold firmly to a realist view of science as a discipline that yields actual knowledge of the world corresponding to the way things really are. Unlike classical apologists, they tend to base arguments on scientific theories with great confidence. While they agree that science changes, they see its changes as primarily advances in knowledge. Thus evidentialists are rarely young-earth creationists; most hold to some form of old-earth creationism. They appeal primarily to the facts of nature to refute evolutionism on the scientists’ own terms, rather than questioning the reliability of the scientific enterprise.

History as the Medium of Revelation

It is in the area of history where most evidentialists seek primarily to ground their apologetic.58 Swinburne is only a partial exception to this generalization. While he gives scant attention in most of his books to the historical evidence for Christianity, this is because he regards himself as a philosopher and not an historian. However, he does hold that a positive assessment of the historicity of the biblical miracles would increase the probability of theism. He also argues “that the testimony of many witnesses to experiences apparently of God makes the existence of God probable if it is not already on other evidence very improbable.”59 But this is essentially an historical argument.

The most basic reason evidentialists ground their apologetic in history is because the revelation of God they are seeking to defend is essentially historical. History is the medium of revelation; our knowledge of God comes from his acts in history. Since the Christian faith stands or falls on its claim that God has acted in history, apologists must make their defense at that point. For evidentialists this historical, testable character sets Christianity apart from other religions and is its greatest strength, as Montgomery explains:

The historic Christian claim differs qualitatively from the claims of all other world religions at the epistemological point: on the issue of testability. Eastern faiths and Islam, to take familiar examples, ask the uncommitted seeker to discover their truth experientially: the faith-experience will be self-validating. . . . Christianity, on the other hand, declares that the truth of its absolute claims rests squarely on certain historical facts, open to ordinary investigation.60

The evidentialist appeal to historical facts should not be construed as naively expecting non-Christians to recognize the significance of the facts without resistance. Evidentialists emphasize that there is a subjective dimension to the interpretation of history. Specifically, they point out that persons holding implicitly or explicitly to philosophies of history that are inimical to the Christian worldview will not be open to the historical facts that verify that Christian worldview. They find it necessary, then, to subject such philosophies of history to critique, and to explicate a Christian philosophy of history. Swinburne’s defense of theism fits here: his argument for the existence of God is concerned with showing not merely that there is a God but that this God providentially orders the world and history.61

On the other hand, evidentialists maintain that historical interpretation has an objective dimension as well, one presented by the facts that stubbornly refuse to fit into anti-Christian belief systems. The historical facts about Jesus Christ constitute the primary challenge to non-Christian philosophies of history, and these facts carry within themselves their own interpretation that the historian discovers, not imposes.

Evidentialists do recognize, then, that the religious beliefs and values of historians have a profound influence on their interpretation of historical events. In some cases what passes for “unbiased” history is “often no more than a mask covering presuppositions of a most gratuitous sort.”62 The solution to this problem, according to Montgomery, is not to abandon one’s presuppositions, but to think about and be frank about them. History should be written from a definite point of view because “the most dangerous historians have not been those with definite convictions, but those who have been unaware of their convictions.”63

Montgomery rejects the claim of historical relativists that the historian’s own subjectivity defeats any attempt to obtain a genuinely objective view of the past.64 He also rejects the claim of some neo-orthodox theologians, such as Rudolf Bultmann, that historical events have no meaning apart from the present spiritual experience of encounter with the Christ of faith. Montgomery argues that “if historical judgments cannot be anchored in the bedrock of objective reality, then the events which are the focus of those judgments become secondary and for all practical purposes useless.”65 In short, if Christ has not been raised in historical fact, our faith in Christ as the risen Savior is in vain (1 Corinthians 15:12-19).

Montgomery also defends an objective, evidential approach to biblical history against the criticisms of other apologists who reject the notion of historical events as self-interpretive. For example, he takes issue with Ronald H. Nash’s claim that “there is no necessary connection between any alleged fact and its interpretation.”66 In contrast he asserts, “The conviction that historical facts do carry their interpretations (i.e., that the facts in themselves provide adequate criteria for choosing among variant interpretations of them) is essential both to Christian and to general historiography.”67 Elsewhere he writes that “a Christian philosophy of history has to begin with the assumption that there are objective events which do indeed carry their interpretation with them. This is true not only of the events of biblical history but of the events of history in general.”68 If historical facts were not objectively true or knowledge of them was not possible, the apostles could not have proclaimed Christ’s resurrection as a truth to be accepted by all people. After all, people whose worldview was inhospitable to such facts could simply dismiss the Christian historical claims as nonsense. The very fact that people’s worldviews can and do change when they take seriously the factual claims of the gospel proves that there is an objective dimension to historical knowledge.

According to Montgomery, a Christian philosophy of history is needed if history is to be interpreted properly as to its ultimate significance. However, this Christian philosophy of history is not to be used as the basis on which the historical events of the New Testament are defended. Such an approach would be viciously circular. Rather, these principles of historiography are based on the verifiable reality of Jesus’ death and resurrection and provide a guide for interpreting the rest of human history. In addition, the apologist must employ a Christian philosophy of history as a benchmark against which non-Christian presuppositions about history that distort or reject the gospel events can be exposed. That is, the evidentialist does not ask the non-Christian to accept these historiographical principles, but he does ask the non-Christian not to assume dogmatically principles that are at odds with a Christian view of history (for example, an antisupernatural assumption). Instead, he asks the non-Christian to examine the historical evidence fairly and be open to the philosophical implications of that evidence. As the non-Christian does this, he will find that God has revealed himself in and through history, particularly in the unique events of Christ’s incarnate life, death, and resurrection.

Experience Founded on Evidence

Evidentialism recognizes the importance of experience in the Christian life. Christian faith is not merely an intellectual acceptance of facts about Christ, but is a personal experience of a relationship with Christ. But evidentialists generally hold that the Christian’s experience is not self-validating. Robert Sabath, in a paper entitled “LSD and Religious Truth,” makes the point with startling forcefulness:

It cannot be emphasized too strongly that every psychological by-product of Christianity can be reproduced by LSD and by almost every other religion, including a sense of meaning in life, integration of personality, increased sensitivity to others, greater self-acceptance, psychological relief from anxiety and guilt feelings, tranquility and inner harmony. . . . The mere fact that a psychological event has taken place in one’s brain cannot establish the truth of any metaphysical assertion. The assertion “God exists” does not follow from the assertion “I had an experience of God” simply because experiences admit to radically different interpretations.69

The subjective experience of faith is for evidentialists a response to the objective revelation of God in his historical acts of redemption through Jesus Christ. Sabath continues:

If God exists—the kind of personal creator God most Christians and theists talk about—he must exist independent of my subjective experience of him; his existence must therefore be validated by a criterion other than my own private experience. The uniqueness of Christianity is that there is such a criterion in the personal invasion of God himself into the public world of our objective experience. Christian existential experience is rooted in objective, external works of God himself, fleshing out his life in space and time in the person of Jesus Christ and showing himself to be God by his resurrection from the dead.70

Whereas apologists of other traditions tend to be critical of the apostle Thomas’s demand to see and touch the resurrected body of Jesus before he would believe, evidentialists are often more sympathetic. They suggest that Christ’s appearance to Thomas shows that God is quite willing to provide empirical evidence for the truth of the gospel, as Clark Eugene Barshinger’s statement in Christianity for the Tough-minded illustrates:

Christian believers have never been able to separate their religious experience from the positive assertions of Scripture regarding the nature and authority of Jesus Christ. Doubting Thomas is the prime example. He refused belief until he saw the evidence of the resurrection. When this evidence was provided, the religious experience became existential truth and he responded, “My Lord and my God.” The existential Christian experience rests in the revealed truth of God embodied in the resurrected Christ and the authoritative Scripture.71

The purpose for which apologists present non-Christians with evidence, according to evidentialists, is to bring them to the point where they have a credible basis for believing the gospel. But the subjective experience and assurance of its truth come from the Holy Spirit when a person responds to the evidence and comes to faith. According to Montgomery, the evidence brings nonbelievers to a point of decision in which they have good grounds for “trying” Christianity; it does not “force” anyone to believe.

The argument is intended, rather, to give solid objective ground for testing the Christian faith experientially. How is the test made? By confronting, with no more than “suspension of disbelief,” the Christ of the Scriptures; for “faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God” and (said Christ) “whoever has the will to do the will of God shall know whether my teaching comes from God or is merely my own” [Romans 10:17; John 7:17]. The Scriptural Gospel is ultimately self-attesting, but the honest inquirer needs objective grounds for trying it, since there are a welter of conflicting religious opinions and one can become psychologically jaded through indiscriminate trials of religious belief. Only the Christian world-view offers objective ground for testing it experientially; therefore Christ deserves to be given first opportunity to make His claims known to the human heart.72

For Further Study

Montgomery, John Warwick. The Shape of the Past: A Christian Response to Secular Philosophies of History. Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1962. Reprint 1975. Reviews the history of historiography and sets forth a Christian philosophy of history.

________. Where Is History Going? Essays in Support of the Historical Truth of the Christian Revelation. Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1969. Follow-up volume to Shape of the Past, presenting an historical defense of the Christian claims about Jesus Christ and critiquing the philosophies of history of Barth, Tillich, and others.

________, ed. Evidence for Faith: Deciding the God Question. Cornell Symposium on Evidential Apologetics 1986. Dallas: Probe Books, 1991; distributed by Word Publishing. A collection of evidentialist essays: Part One defends an evidentialist approach to apologetics; Parts Two and Three discuss scientific evidences from cosmology and biology; Part Five contains John E. Hare’s article “The Argument from Experience” (253-73).

2William Kingdon Clifford, “The Ethics of Belief,” in An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism, ed. Gordon Stein (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1980), 282. The article was first published in 1877 and soon thereafter in Clifford’s Lectures and Essays, ed. Leslie Stephen and Frederick Pollock (London: Macmillan, 1879). It has been reprinted several times, for example, in The Theory of Knowledge: Classical and Contemporary Readings, ed. Louis P. Pojman (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1993).

3Dan Story, Christianity on the Offense: Responding to the Beliefs and Assumptions of Spiritual Seekers (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1998), 69.

4Montgomery, “The Theologian’s Craft: A Discussion of Theory Formation and Theory Testing in Theology,” in Suicide of Christian Theology, 274.

38Beckwith has written extensively in defense of Christian ethics as well as on other issues of apologetic significance. His earliest apologetic book, Baha’i (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1985), closely follows Montgomery’s form of evidentialism. More recent works reflect a more philosophically developed evidentialism. See David Hume’s Argument Against Miracles; and “History and Miracles,” in In Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God’s Action in History, ed. R. Douglas Geivett and Gary R. Habermas (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1997), 86-98.

39See especially R. Douglas Geivett, Evil and the Evidence for God: The Challenge of John Hick’s Theodicy, afterword by John Hick (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993); “The Evidential Value of Miracles,” in In Defense of Miracles, 178-95.

58See most recently Gary Habermas, “Evidential Apologetics,” in Five Views on Apologetics, edited by Cowan, 92-121, which emphasizes historical evidences. The essay by Paul D. Feinberg, “Cumulative Case Apologetics,” 148-72, presents a variant form of evidentialism that includes but de-emphasizes historical evidences.

11. Presenting Evidence That Demands a Verdict

Of the four approaches profiled in this book, the classical and evidentialist approaches are the closest to each other. Indeed, many apologists, such as William Lane Craig, J. P. Moreland, and Richard Swinburne, cannot for various reasons be neatly placed into one approach rather than the other. One reason this is so is that the second ‘step’ or stage of the classical apologetic uses many if not all of the very same arguments that are part of the evidentialist arsenal. That is, after showing that God exists, classical apologists turn to evidences showing that God has revealed himself in the Bible and incarnated himself in Jesus—and these evidences will be the same evidences that are crucial to most evidentialist apologetics. Another reason for the similarity between these two approaches is that evidentialism is by nature eclectic, and therefore evidentialists freely use classical apologetic arguments, including those used by the classical apologist to establish theism.

Despite the similarities between the two approaches, there are some differences that justify recognizing them as two distinct ‘families’ or types of apologetics. As we have already noted, the main difference is that classical apologetics builds the case for Christianity in two stages: first the evidence for God (theism), and second the evidence for Christianity. The rationale for this approach is that the miracles of Christianity can be viewed as credible only within a theistic worldview. Evidentialists, on the other hand, think the case for Christianity can be most effectively presented using evidences for creation, for the historicity of Jesus and especially his resurrection, and other evidences in one ‘cumulative case’ for Christian theism.

Scripture as Source

According to John Warwick Montgomery, “The final and best evidence of God’s existence lies in his Word—in the triple sense of Christ, the gospel he proclaimed, and the Scripture that infallibly conveys it.”1 This statement nicely captures the spirit of the evangelical evidentialist apologetic. Rather than developing an apologetic for theism as preparation for considering the specific claims of Christ to reveal God to us and to reconcile us to God, the evidentialist views Christ and the Bible, in which we learn about Christ, as the best source for a Christian apologetic.

The first step for evidentialists such as Montgomery, then, is to defend the biblical writings, not as infallible Scripture, but as historically credible and reliable documents. Securing belief in God is not considered a prerequisite to taking this first step; only clearing away any methodological or philosophical assumptions that prejudge the question of the truth of the biblical narratives is necessary. So, for example, in his book History and Christianity, Montgomery details “four common errors” in the anti-Christian polemic of philosopher Avrum Stroll before beginning his apologetic proper: (1) Stroll relies almost exclusively on modern “authorities” of a radically rationalistic sort (17-18).2 (2) Stroll ignores the evidence of the earliest primary documents, specifically the letters of Paul (18-19). (3) Stroll begs the question by assuming that the miraculous events reported in the Gospels could not have happened simply because they were miraculous (19-21). Note that Montgomery does not argue here that miracles are possible; he simply objects to the assumption that they are impossible. (4) Stroll engages in groundless historical speculation when he suggests that the Christian view of Jesus was the product of “messianic fever” in first-century Judaism (21-22).

Having cleared away these errors, Montgomery begins his positive case with this disclaimer: “We won’t naively assume the ‘inspiration’ or ‘infallibility’ of the New Testament records and then by circular reasoning attempt to prove what we have previously assumed. We will regard the documents, even though today they are usually printed on fine India paper with verse numbers, only as documents, and we will treat them as we would any other historical materials” (25-26).

To assure his readers he is employing an unbiased method of treating the historical reliability of the New Testament, Montgomery chooses tests of reliability drawn from a textbook on English literary history by a military historian.3 These are the bibliographical, internal, and external tests (26). Montgomery and other evidentialists use this threefold test regularly to defend the historical reliability of the New Testament.4

The bibliographical test seeks to determine whether the existing or extant copies of a document are reliable reproductions of the wording of the original document. Montgomery emphasizes that we have many more manuscript copies for the New Testament writings than for other ancient writings, and that the time gap between the earliest complete copies and the originals is smaller for the New Testament than for other ancient writings (26-29). “To be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament books is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament” (29).

The bibliographical test does not establish the factual accuracy of the historical narratives in the documents, only that the documents as we know them are substantially the same as they were when originally written. Accurate copies of fables would still be fables. But the claim is so often made that the New Testament writings are unreliable because of mistakes in the copying process that apologists find it necessary and helpful to point out the evidence for the textual reliability of the Bible.

The second and third tests address the historical reliability of the contents of the biblical documents. The internal test considers the claims of the writings as to their historicity and internal consistency. Here Montgomery and other evidentialists insist “that the benefit of the doubt is to be given to the document itself, not arrogated by the critic to himself” (29). Paul’s writings claim to be written by Paul, and the Gospels, especially Luke and John, claim to be recording history based on eyewitness testimony (29-30). These claims should be accepted at face value as truthful unless and until evidence to the contrary is produced.

The external test asks whether the testimony of the biblical writings is corroborated or undermined by extrabiblical sources. Here Montgomery focuses on the Gospels. Luke’s accuracy is confirmed by the archaeological and geographical investigations of William Ramsay toward the end of the nineteenth century (31-32). Second-century Christians who knew the apostles or their immediate disciples testified that the Gospels were based on eyewitness testimony. Thus Mark’s Gospel was based on Peter’s recollections; Matthew, himself an apostle, wrote his Gospel while the other apostles were still alive; Luke was written by Paul’s traveling companion; and John the apostle wrote the Gospel bearing his name (32-34).

Montgomery concludes “that on the basis of the accepted canons of historical method . . . the New Testament documents must be regarded as reliable sources of information” (43). This line of argument “depends in no sense on theology. It rests solely upon historical method, the kind of method all of us have to use in analyzing historical data, whether Christians, rationalists, agnostics or Tibetan monks” (44).

Besides passing tests of general historical reliability, Scripture functions in more profound ways as the source of evidence for its own truth and the truth claims of Christianity. Evidentialists marshal evidences from a number of directions to build a cumulative case for the truth of the Bible. These evidences include the miracles of the Bible, the uniqueness of the Bible, and fulfilled prophecy. Later we will consider the evidentialist approach to the miracles of the Bible; here we will highlight the argument from fulfilled prophecy.

Fulfilled prophecy, while it has always had a place in apologetics,5 has a distinctive use and emphasis in evidential apologetics, especially since the nineteenth century when books like Alexander Keith’s Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion Derived from the Literal Fulfilment of Prophecy went through many editions.6

Evidentialists note that “fulfilled prophecy was part of the means of establishing Old Testament religion.”7 John Bloom, for example, quotes the Lord’s challenge in Isaiah issued to idols and all false gods to prove themselves by predicting the future (Isaiah 44:21-23; 44:7-8), and comments: “The God of the Bible is calling for a rigorous test which involves the objective prediction of future events in human history. . . . Logically, we can reverse this challenge to other ‘gods’ and ask if the God of the Bible can predict the future Himself. If He can, and if no other religion can substantiate a similar claim, then we have an objective, historically testable verification that the God of the Bible alone exists.”8

Bloom identifies four criteria that need to be satisfied in order to conclude that a genuine prophecy has been given. (1) It must be clear. (2) We must know that it was given before the event. (3) It cannot be fulfilled by the actions of the human person making the prediction. And (4) its content must be unusually specific or long range so as to make its fulfillment remarkable. Bloom then implicitly adds a fifth, namely, that the successful prediction must not be accompanied by a number of false predictions. Thus Jeane Dixon might be given some credit for predicting John F. Kennedy’s assassination but for the fact that so many of her other predictions have failed.9 Anyone making dozens of unlikely predictions year after year is bound to get a few of them right!

Evidentialists point to three clusters of fulfilled prophecies as evidence for the divine inspiration and truth of the Bible. First, the Old Testament contains numerous prophecies concerning the rise and fall of various nations and cities surrounding Israel, such as Egypt, Tyre and Sidon, Babylon, and Nineveh. There is some dispute about the details of the Tyre prophecy in Ezekiel 26, but evidentialists are confident that the chapter, properly interpreted, was dramatically and literally fulfilled.10

Second, evidentialists cite the existence and history of Israel as an amazing fulfillment of biblical prophecy.11 Robert Newman tells the story of the skeptical Frederick the Great, who asked his court chaplain for a good argument for God, to which the chaplain replied, “The Jew, your majesty!”12 The Bible predicts that the Jews would fall into idolatry and be chastised, yet would later be returned to the land. Evidentialists point out that nations have repeatedly tried to annihilate the Jewish culture and people and yet have failed; they see this as evidence of God’s remarkable providential care for the Jewish people.13

Third, evidentialists are especially impressed by the fulfilled prophecies in the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The Gospels, especially Matthew, strongly emphasize the idea that Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecies. Evidentialists are aware of the common criticism that the Gospel writers take the Old Testament texts out of context, but they reply that this criticism is without merit. Newman points out various paradoxical features of Old Testament messianic prophecies that find their natural and obvious fulfillment in Jesus. The Messiah was to be a Jew who brought light to the Gentiles (Isaiah 42:6-7; 49:5-6). He was to be born a human son, yet he preexisted as God (Micah 5:2; Isaiah 9:6-7). He will be humble yet exalted (Daniel 7:13-14; Zechariah 9:9). He will suffer ignominiously yet be vindicated and exalted as universal ruler (Psalm 22; Isaiah 52:13–53:12). He will be both king and priest, offices kept separate in Judaism (Psalm 110).14 Newman also cites prophecies indicating that the Messiah would come toward the end of the Second Temple period (ca. 515 b.c.–a.d. 70), making it impossible that any individual living after that time could be the Messiah (Haggai 2:3-9; Daniel 9:24-27).15

These three types of fulfilled prophecies in the Bible add up to an impressive array of evidences that evidentialists believe are unparalleled and should be quite convincing. The skeptic whose worldview excludes divine fulfillment of prophecy is advised that the evidence is sufficient to call such a worldview into question. So Newman concludes, “one would be a fool to keep appealing to accident when the evidence suggests one’s worldview is faulty.”16 Fulfilled prophecy, then, not only provides evidence for the inspiration of the Bible, but for evidentialists it also contributes to the case for the theistic worldview.

Evidentialists are not alone in using fulfilled prophecy as part of their apologetic. However, while evidentialists use it to prove the existence of God, classical apologists generally do not. Norman Geisler, for example, states plainly: “Fulfilled prophecy does not prove the existence of God, but it does show that unusual events predicted in his Name that come to pass are evidence of his special activity.”17

The Uniqueness of Christianity

The apologist today is confronted with myriad religious options in almost every part of the world and a rising tide of religious pluralism. Faced with these realities, the evangelical apologist must be prepared to give a reason for claiming that Jesus Christ is the only Savior and that true knowledge of God can be found only in the Christian faith.

As we saw in Part Two, classical apologists generally approach this question by analyzing the worldviews of the major non-Christian religions. They contend that only theism, the belief that the world was created and is utterly dependent on an infinite yet personal Creator, is a philosophically viable worldview. From there they argue that of the major theistic religions (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity), Christianity is the true one (because it, not Judaism or Islam, is the fulfillment of the revelations given to Abraham and his people in the Old Testament). While evidentialists might find such an argument useful as a supplementary line of reasoning, their primary approach to this question is characteristically different.

Evidentialists confront the problem of religious pluralism on two levels. First, they argue that the belief that all religions are basically the same does not take seriously the facts about the different religions. For example, Montgomery criticizes Altizer’s claim that the modern discipline of comparative religions has demonstrated “an underlying unity of thought between Eastern mystical religion and the Christian faith”18 by noting that the famed comparative religions scholar Mircea Eliade, whom Altizer professes to follow, rejects this idea. Montgomery tells of a conversation he had with Eliade in which the renowned scholar agreed that “Christianity’s unique, historical focus on a ‘once-for-all’ incarnation of God in Christ” sharply distinguishes it from mythical and mystical religions. Altizer’s mistake “stems from his general disrespect for historical facts: he will not allow a given religion to speak for itself. . . . If Professor Altizer would let the facts speak for themselves, he would have to give up any hope of blending Eastern and Western religion.”19

Other evidentialists make the same point in different ways. For example, Francis Beckwith objects to the Baha’i teaching that all the world’s major religions were inspired by God. He compares the doctrines about God taught by Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, Muhammad, and other religious founders and finds them hopelessly contradictory. “God cannot be impersonal, personal, transcendent, polytheistic, pantheistic, monotheistic, able to beget, not able to beget, relevant, and irrelevant all at the same time. . . . Irreconcilable data gives us no knowledge of God whatsoever.”20

Second, evidentialists maintain that Christianity has a solid claim to be the only true religion because it alone can produce testable evidence of God’s activity in establishing Christianity in the first place. According to Montgomery, “What modern man insists on above all is a verifiable base for his faith, so that he can bring some order out of the conflicting welter of religious claims.”21 Christianity has miracles, fulfilled prophecies, and other evidences that the God of the Bible is the true God; other religions do not have these phenomena. For example, evidentialists emphasize that non-Christian religions do not even claim that their religious leaders were raised from the dead.22 Beckwith observes, “a religion that is true would be one that defeats death, man’s most detestable foe. Of all the religious leaders previously discussed, only one, Jesus of Nazareth, has conquered the Grim Reaper.”23

The Case for God

Evidentialists, like classical apologists, seek to offer arguments for the existence of God on grounds that are in principle understandable and acceptable to non-Christians. However, they go about this task in a somewhat different way.

First, they generally subordinate the classical philosophical proofs for God’s existence to a different place in their apologetic, and a few evidentialists even reject the philosophical proofs as invalid and unhelpful. Arnold Weigel is an extreme example of the latter: “In opposing the traditional rational proofs of God’s existence, [Bertrand] Russell is destroying a straw man, not the Christian position. . . . A rational proof of God’s existence is, moreover, actually inconsistent with the Christian faith.”24

Much more commonly, though, evidentialists retain the philosophical proofs but do not treat them as sufficient to establish theism. Instead they rework the philosophical arguments into a cumulative case for theism that is predominantly inductive in character. Richard Swinburne, who exemplifies this approach, argues that the existence of God is a probable hypothesis because it is relatively simple and has significant explanatory power. Specifically, the theory that God exists helps explain the existence of the world (the cosmological argument), its order and basic beauty (the teleological argument), as well as human consciousness (the argument from mind) and morality (the moral argument).25

Likewise, William Lane Craig has developed the cosmological and teleological proofs into complex arguments combining philosophical reasoning with scientific evidence. Craig is perhaps best known for his articulation of the kalâm cosmological argument, a philosophical proof for God’s existence based on the premise that the universe cannot exist without a beginning.26 But he does not leave the argument there. Recognizing that the logical case against a beginningless universe is abstract and not intuitively obvious to all, he offers confirmation of the premise from the evidence for the big bang,27 a lead other evidentialist philosophers and apologists have followed.28 Big bang cosmology is a crucial aspect of the evidentialist apologetic of Hugh Ross, whose professional training was in astronomy.29

The argument may be briefly summarized here.30 Scientists have observed that galaxies are moving away from us in all directions, and that the farther away they are the faster they are receding. This evidence shows that the universe is expanding. Scientists have also discovered a faint background radiation in the cosmos such as was predicted to exist if the universe had exploded into existence from an original single point. These and other observations have led the vast majority of scientists working in the field to embrace some form of big bang cosmology, according to which the universe had a beginning. This conclusion was not reached easily. An absolute beginning for all physical reality implies that the universe was caused to come into existence by something beyond the investigative competency of the natural sciences. This limitation provoked many scientists at first to resist the conclusion that the universe had a beginning. Scientists often operate by the ideal that everything can and should eventually be explained scientifically, and the big bang presents an apparent dead end to this ideal. Yet the vast majority of scientists have been won over to the big bang by the evidence.

Although most scientists admit that the universe had a beginning, many try to remain agnostic as to its cause. Scientists should not shy away from concluding that God created the universe if that is where the evidence leads, as Douglas Geivett, an evidentialist philosopher, has argued. “Even if the cause of the origin of the physical universe is not directly and empirically accessible, theoreticians fail in their capacity as scientists if they resist the conclusion to which the evidence leads, for the ideal objective of science is to explain all phenomena.”31

The teleological argument has also been reworked into an evidentialist argument, and in fact has enjoyed something of a renewed respect in the past fifteen years or so. The argument is now commonly based on the so-called anthropic cosmological principle, or more simply the anthropic principle.32 This term refers to the observation that numerous factors inherent in the universe appear to be just right for sustaining a universe in which life, including humanity, has even the possibility of existing. In other words, these are factors that must be just right—often within a very small range—for us to be here noticing them in the first place. This phenomenon is often called the “fine-tuning” of the universe. Again, Hugh Ross is a scientist-apologist who has given this argument a great deal of prominence,33 though it is now widely used in evidentialist apologetics.34 The following table summarizes just ten of the more than fifty factors that have been identified in the anthropic principle.35

Cosmic and Geological Evidence of Design

Factor

If Greater

If Fewer

Strong nuclear force constant

No hydrogen

Nothing but hydrogen

Gravitational force constant

Stars burn out quickly

Stars don’t produce heavy elements

Expansion rate of the universe

No galaxies form

Universe contracts before stars can form

Average distance between stars

Heavy elements spread too thin for rocky planets to form

Planetary orbits would be destabilized by nearby stars

Earth’s surface gravity

Too much ammonia and methane in atmosphere

Not enough water in atmosphere

Earth’s distance from sun

Too cold

Too hot

Earth’s rotation period

Fierce winds

Temperature extremes from day to night

Thickness of earth’s crust

Not enough oxygen in atmosphere

Volcanoes and earthquakes in much greater measure

Carbon dioxide level

Runaway greenhouse effect

Plants die

Ozone level

Too cold

Too hot

In addition to scientific, empirical reworkings of the classical theistic arguments, most evidentialists emphasize the evidence for God’s existence from his acts in history. Here we are again talking about fulfilled prophecy, miracles in general, and above all the resurrection of Jesus. For evidentialists, the main reason we know God exists is because he revealed himself in verifiable ways in history—ultimately and most definitively in Jesus. Montgomery makes this point in connection with an illustration used by the philosopher Antony Flew (who at the time was an atheist36). Flew asked us to imagine a situation in which we are told that an invisible gardener visits a garden every day and tends it. Should we believe the gardener exists despite the fact that every attempt to observe his movements fails? Montgomery comments: “The New Testament affirmation of the existence of God (the Divine Gardener in Flew’s parable) is not a claim standing outside the realm of empirical testability. Quite the contrary: the Gardener entered his garden (the world) in the person of Jesus Christ, showing himself to be such ‘by many infallible proofs’ (Acts 1:3).”37

The Inductive Problem of Evil

As we saw in Part Two, classical apologists have responded at great length to “the problem of evil.” As traditionally defined, this is a logical, or deductive, problem that presents a seeming contradiction in the theistic worldview. Specifically, the (deductive) problem of evil asks whether it is logically possible for an all-good, all-powerful God to exist simultaneously with a world he created and yet has evil in it.

While many modern skeptics continue to cite it in this deductive form, some nontheistic philosophers acknowledge that the problem of evil fails to prove a logical consistency in the theistic worldview. As classical apologists and philosophers have pointed out, an all-good and all-powerful God might choose to create a world in which evil would arise if God had some good reason for doing so. For example, it is at least logically possible that creating such a world was unavoidable if God was to create people with a moral capacity for making choices. But nontheistic philosophers have not been entirely satisfied with this defense. They argue that a much more difficult version of the problem still remains to be addressed. Granted (at least for the sake of argument) that it is possible that God created a world where evil exists, how likely is this to be in fact the case? This is the inductive or evidential problem of evil. Douglas Geivett explains the difference between these two versions of the argument.

The logical problem of evil asks, Is it logically possible that God and evil coexist? Any answer to this problem must show that the existence of God is compatible with the fact of evil in the world. . . . The evidential problem of evil asks, Is it evidentially plausible that God and evil coexist? This objection has the following form: God must have a morally sufficient reason for allowing any evil that he allows; but there is much evil in the world for which we can imagine no morally sufficient reason, such that it is highly unlikely that God exists (61).38

Geivett’s own response to the evidential problem of evil is based on the positive evidence for God’s existence. If significant evidence can be presented to show that it is highly likely that God exists, then the burden of proof is on the person who would argue that God’s existence is unlikely. Moreover, if on the basis of the evidence we conclude that God probably does exist, then, given that God is good and all-powerful, we may conclude that God is justified in permitting evil even if we do not know what his reason or reasons may be (61). “There is room for speculation about the mystery surrounding God’s actual reasons for permitting evil. But failure to identify the actual reasons God has for permitting evil will touch the natural theologian’s conclusion—God exists—not at all” (62). Once the theist concludes that God does exist and therefore must have a good reason for permitting evil, a problem of evil remains. This new problem is not whether God and evil both exist, but “how both can exist” (64). “The theist will have deflected the specific objection to the existence of God on the basis of evil without even the most cursory analysis of evil if the theist has produced a compelling argument for the existence of God on independent grounds” (64-65).

Another evidentialist who analyzes the problem of evil along inductive lines is John Hare. He notes that while any form of the problem is insufficient as a deductive proof of God’s nonexistence, a more defensible version of the argument reasons “that the amount of evil we experience makes the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God unlikely” (238).39 Hare goes on to note that the likelihood of God’s existence will depend largely on whether, apart from the reality of evil, one sees good evidence for God’s existence:

We are interested in how probable it is that God exists, given that there is a certain amount of evil. This depends, first, on how probable it is that God exists anyway. This is the so-called prior probability of the hypothesis. It also depends on whether this much evil is more likely to exist if God exists or if He does not. This is very roughly the explanatory power of the hypothesis. . . . Theists, in my experience, usually agree with atheists that the amount of evil in the world makes it harder to believe in a good God. But they have to be careful. For if theists agree that it is much harder, and they do not think that God’s existence is, independent of evil, much more likely, they may be in an untenable position. (239-240)

After surveying recent attempts to deal with the evidential problem of evil and deeming them all inadequate, Hare suggests that the only viable solution may be what he calls a “disjunctive explanation” (245). That is, the explanation will have the following form: x (evil) is to be explained by either a, b, c, or some other factor. In other words, there is no one explanation for each instance of evil. Bad things happen for a variety of reasons: to develop and refine a person’s faith and character, to bring about a revelation of God’s glory, to experience suffering vicariously in someone else’s place, to punish people for their own acts of evil, to alert people to physical dangers (biologically useful pain), to learn the consequences of evil, or to alert people to their need for salvation (248-250).

In an essay on the evidence from the fine-tuning of the universe for God’s existence, Robin Collins argues that this positive argument for belief in God is much stronger than the inductive argument from evil against belief in God. In the case of the fine-tuning argument, we actually have good, objective data from which to derive a reasonable estimate of the probability of the universe just happening to be the kind capable of having and sustaining intelligent living beings. This is because the scientific data includes information about the universe as a whole (e.g., the universe’s expansion rate, the universal forces of matter, gravity, and electromagnetism). In the case of the evidential argument from evil, we have no way to quantify the relative amounts of good and evil that have been and will be produced in the universe, and indeed have good reason to admit that we know about only a small fraction of the good and evil that have occurred and will occur in the universe. Collins concludes that “the relevant probability estimates in the case of the fine-tuning argument are much more secure than those estimates in the probabilistic version of the atheist’s argument from evil.”40

Miracles as Evidence for God

Evidentialists believe that miracles, like fulfilled prophecy, can be used in the verification of the supernatural. Whereas classical apologists tend to argue that one must first establish the existence of God in order to render miracles credible, evidentialists argue that miracles can actually serve as evidence for the existence of God. An excellent example of an evidentialist treatment of miracles may be found in the work of Francis Beckwith, particularly his monograph critiquing David Hume’s argument against miracles.41

Beckwith defines the term miracle inductively or empirically rather than deductively: “A miracle is a divine intervention which occurs contrary to the regular course of nature within a significant historical-religious context” (7). That is, a miracle is (a) scientifically inexplicable, (b) religiously significant, and (c) supernaturally (or, divinely) caused.

Regarding the first-mentioned requirement, Beckwith denies that a miracle must be defined as an event that can be known to be permanently inexplicable scientifically. He contends that a miracle “is inexplicable in terms of what we know about currently well-established scientific laws” (9). This means that it is always possible, however slender the possibility, that an apparent miracle will turn out to be scientifically explicable. But Beckwith does not see this as a liability.

Hence, the fact that one cannot find deductive validity for any scientific law only means that our judgments about events purporting to violate these laws cannot reach the point of apodictic certainty. Since no discipline dealing with empirical judgments can render such certainty (e.g., law, history, psychology, anthropology, archaeology, etc.), it should not bother the believer in miracles one bit that miracles cannot be demonstrated to be permanently inexplicable; scientific inexplicability in terms of currently well-established laws will do just fine. (9)

Beckwith also points out “that science’s problem-solving capacity has been completely impotent in making any of the primary law-violating miracles of the Christian tradition scientifically explicable, e.g., resurrections, changing water into wine, walking through walls, levitating, multiplying fishes and loaves, instantaneously healing lepers, and walking on water” (10).42

Beckwith’s second condition for an event to be regarded as a miracle is that it have an historical-religious significance. “Miracles are not just purposeless and bizarre scientific oddities, but occur in such a way that purpose is attached to them by virtue of when and why they occur.” Beckwith illustrates his point with the case of a person who had apparently returned to physical life after having died. Suppose this person had claimed that he would do this and had offered a theological explanation for it, and suppose further that he claimed to be the culmination of his culture’s theological expectations and prophetic predictions. “Within this religious context the physiological anomaly of a resurrection takes on a significance which would not have been present if this individual had ‘just happened’ to rise from the dead for no apparent reason” (11).

If an event is scientifically inexplicable and has historical-religious significance, Beckwith concludes that we are justified in concluding that the event was supernaturally caused. This assumes, of course, that we have already concluded that the event occurred at all. Ever since David Hume’s critique of belief in miracles, answering skepticism about the rationality of believing any such events occur has been of crucial importance in Christian apologetics, and this problem is the focus of Beckwith’s book.

Hume himself had enunciated the evidentialist principle that “a wise man . . . proportions his belief to the evidence” (32).43 But Beckwith concludes that Hume did not live by this principle because he confused evidence with probability. He “failed to realize that the wise and intelligent person bases his or her convictions on evidence, not on Humean ‘probability.’ That is, an event’s occurrence may be very improbable in terms of past experience and observation, but current observation and testimony may lead one to believe that the evidence for the event is good” (38). He gives several examples (discussed in chapter 9) to illustrate the point that the unusual or unlikely may be quite believable if the evidence is good enough.

Beckwith admits that one or several pieces of testimonial evidence would usually be insufficient evidence to conclude that a miracle had occurred.

However, if the testimonial evidence is multiplied and reinforced by circumstantial considerations . . . and the explanation of the event as a violation connects the data in a simple and coherent fashion (just as we expect a natural law to do), and a denial of the event’s occurrence becomes an ad hoc naturalism-of-the-gaps, I do not see why it would not be entirely reasonable to believe that this event has occurred (based on a convergence of independent probabilities). I believe that this approach retains a healthy Humean skepticism by taking into consideration the improbability of a miraculous event, but I also believe that it resists a dogmatic skepticism by taking seriously the possibility that one may have evidence for a miracle. (37)44

To Hume’s argument that the miracle stories of differing religions cancel one another out, Beckwith replies that some miracle stories are of more profound significance than others, and that the most impressive and significant kind of miracle is resurrection from the dead.

This type of miracle touches man at his deepest existential and personal level, and can be a source of hope, assurance, and peace of mind if the person who conquered death promises eternal life to those who follow his teachings. . . . And, of course, if the miracles of religion A and religion B are evidentially equal, and religion A claims to be ordained by the true God because the leader has the ability to instantaneously heal patterned baldness, while religion B appeals to the resurrection of its founder, then religion B has a qualitatively better miracle. (56, 57)

Beckwith also criticizes the argument that, even granting the occurrence of a miracle, one could not fairly infer the religious significance attributed to it, and answers this argument with a thinly veiled, abstract reference to the Resurrection:

Suppose that a purported miracle-worker, C, says that he is God’s chosen and that he will perform a miracle, R, a resurrection, at time t in order to confirm God’s approval of his mission. . . . Given its human impossibility, its uniqueness (i.e., nobody who has made similar claims, except C, has ever performed R), C’s claim that God is responsible for R, its existential and teleological significance (i.e., C performed R at a particular time t, not at any other time), and the religious context of the event (i.e., C performed R when his claims about himself hinged on the actuality of R occurring at time t), it becomes apparent that a particular message is being communicated through this event, namely, C is God’s chosen one. . . . Furthermore, in light of the converging nature of the facts in this case, and the inference to a rational cause made eminently plausible by them, any appeals to coincidence or freak accident become entirely ad hoc, a sort of naturalism-of-the-gaps. (62-63)

Only at this point does Beckwith discuss God’s existence. He believes a miracle can be identified as such without first establishing God’s existence. Still, he recognizes that providing “good reason” to believe ina God capable of doing miracles “makes it more plausible to believe” that a particular event is a miracle (71). We see here a telling, even defining, difference between the evidentialist and the classical apologist. The evidentialist is not closed to using theistic arguments to make belief in God more plausible or acceptable. Unlike the classical apologist, though, he does not think such arguments are necessary. According to evidentialism, the historical evidence for God’s intervention in space and time is sufficient of itself to establish God’s existence.

After utilizing Craig’s version of the kalâm cosmological argument in support of theism (73-84), Beckwith returns to Hume’s argument against miracles, focusing now on modern reformulations and defenses of Hume’s argument. In response to the skepticism of Antony Flew, Beckwith agrees with Montgomery that the Christian is prepared to exercise a modest skepticism as well, but not to the extent of being closed to the possibility of a miracle. Thus Beckwith quotes with approval Montgomery’s statement that “we accept no miracles unless the primary evidence compels us to it” (100).45 He notes that “most of the objections to the miraculous are pre-evidential. That is, they do not examine the evidence for particular miracles per se, but dispense with miracles in general prior to the examination of the evidence” (121). Again following Montgomery, Beckwith favors “the legal model of evaluating evidence” as the best method for determining whether to believe a particular miracle claim (122).

Jesus: The Evidence

Although some evidentialists focus their apologetic on the scientific evidence for creation, by far the majority concentrate on defending the claims of Jesus Christ, and the overwhelming focus of these defenses pertains to belief in his resurrection from the dead.

The two leading apologists writing on the Resurrection in the past twenty years or so have been Gary Habermas46 and William Lane Craig.47 Although Craig is a classical apologist, his position is in many ways compatible with evidentialism. And in fact, Habermas and Craig use very similar strategies in arguing for the reasonableness of believing that God raised Jesus from the dead.

First, Habermas and Craig develop a set of “core” facts that are rarely denied by modern biblical scholars or historians writing on the subject and for which good evidence exists. Their enumerations differ from one presentation to another, but the following facts appear again and again on the lists.48

1. Jesus was publicly executed and died on a Roman cross.

2. Jesus was buried in a tomb.

3. Jesus’ tomb was discovered empty the Sunday after his burial.

4. Jesus’ followers had no basis for hoping that he would be raised from the dead.

5. Women friends of Jesus had experiences of seeing Jesus alive from the dead.

6. Jesus’ apostles had experiences of seeing Jesus alive from the dead.

7. The first Christians proclaimed in Jerusalem just weeks after Jesus’ death that he had literally risen from the dead.

8. Paul, a persecutor of the Christians, converted to faith in Christ after an experience of seeing Jesus alive from the dead.

One may wonder why, if the vast majority of biblical scholars acknowledge these facts, so many of them question the Resurrection. Craig comments, “It may seem stupefying that while most New Testament critics who have written on these subjects accept the facts which, at least in my opinion, furnish inductive grounds for inferring the resurrection of Jesus, they do not themselves make that inference; but this is, in fact, the situation.”49 Craig himself bases his argument on facts admitted by this majority, “not because truth is determined by numbers, for it certainly is not; rather, it is precisely because . . . I am interested in convincing outsiders that I appeal only to facts which would be accepted by the broad spectrum of scholarship, not just by conservatives.”50

Second, Habermas and Craig refute objections to each of these generally recognized facts and offer additional support for each of these planks of the argument. In practice the two facts most often disputed are the empty tomb and the first appearances of Jesus. The credibility of the empty tomb is defended by several considerations.51 Paul’s reference to Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection as part of the received tradition of the church (1 Corinthians 15:3-5) and the burial account in Mark (which itself is likely pre-Markan) show that the empty tomb was a part of the earliest church’s understanding. The report of all four Gospels that women disciples of Jesus were the first to discover the empty tomb must be historical, since the chauvinistic men of that time were not likely to have invented such a detail. The fact that Jesus’ tomb was not venerated as a shrine shows, again, that the earliest Christians believed the tomb to be empty. The report in Matthew 28:11-15 that the earliest Jewish explanation for the Resurrection story was that the disciples had stolen the body proves that Jesus had in fact been buried and the tomb was in fact empty. This is so, even if one is skeptical about Matthew’s claim that the tomb had been guarded to prevent the body from being stolen—since no one would make up such a story if the tomb had not become empty.

The Resurrection appearances are shown to be authentic history for similar reasons.52 Again, the accounts of the appearances, especially in 1 Corinthians 15:6-8, are too early to have arisen as myths or legends. We have Paul’s firsthand testimony that he saw Jesus alive. The Gospel testimony that the first persons to see Jesus alive were women is self-evidently reliable. All these considerations are brought together by evidentialists to constitute a cumulative case showing that the Resurrection is the most probable, reasonable explanation of the facts.

Third, alternative, naturalistic explanations are examined and shown to be less plausible or factually based than the Resurrection. These explanations typically function as alternatives to one or more of the generally accepted facts adduced by Craig and Habermas. For example, the swoon theory, which holds that Jesus merely passed out on the cross and was revived after being left for dead in the tomb, attempts to overturn the fact of Jesus’ death. John Dominic Crossan’s theory that Jesus’ dead body was left in a ditch or shallow grave and eaten by dogs is meant to circumvent the claim that Jesus was buried in a tomb. Evidentialists argue that such theories are either purely speculative or are based on misreadings of the New Testament writings, and that all fail to come to terms with significant factual evidence.

Fourth, the positive argument from these facts to the conclusion of the resurrection of Jesus is presented. It is argued that the best explanation of the facts is that Jesus did actually rise from the dead. Habermas writes: “In particular, when the early and eyewitness experiences of the disciples, James, and Paul are considered, along with their corresponding transformations and their central message, the historical Resurrection becomes the best explanation for the facts, especially because the alternative theories have failed. Therefore, it may be concluded that the Resurrection is a probable historical event.”53

Craig makes the same point in somewhat more developed fashion:

. . . I am employing inductive reasoning understood according to the model of inference to the best explanation. This model holds that there may be a number of reasonable explanations for a body of evidence, and that one is to choose from this pool of live options that explanation which is the best, that is, which most successfully meets such criteria as having explanatory power, explanatory scope, and not being ad hoc. My claim is that the hypothesis “God raised Jesus from the dead” is the best explanation of the evidence discussed.54

Lastly, Craig and Habermas argue that the resurrection of Jesus in the context of his life and teachings verifies his claim to deity. Jesus’ claim to be God would lack all credibility had he remained dead. The fact that he rose from the dead provides strong warrant for accepting his divine claims. On the other hand, the Resurrection would lack all significance if it had appeared in history merely as an anomalous or inexplicable event. As Habermas and Licona observe, Jesus’ life “created a context in which his resurrection from the dead would not be a surprise. He claimed that he was divine. He performed deeds that were interpreted as miracles. And he predicted his resurrection.”55 Instead, the Resurrection comes with an interpretive context of the supernatural acts and revelations of the God of Israel in the Old Testament and the supernatural works and claims of Jesus in his earthly ministry.56 Here these and other apologists adduce evidence from the Gospels that Jesus did in fact claim to be deity. Jesus forgave sins that had not been committed against him; he made statements that the Jewish authorities understandably interpreted as blasphemous claims to deity; he spoke on the Law of God as if it was his to define and apply.

From the historical evidence for the Resurrection, then, evidentialists infer that God really did raise Jesus from the dead, and from this one point the whole of the Christian faith may potentially be defended. For if Jesus was raised from the dead, given the religious context of the event, then God evidently does exist. If God raised Jesus from the dead, then the true God is the God of Jesus Christ. He is the God of the Jewish people who inspired the Old Testament, who sent Jesus his Son into the world for our salvation, and who commissioned the apostles and their associates to establish the Christian church and to produce the New Testament.

For Further Study

Geivett, R. Douglas. Evil and the Evidence for God: The Challenge of John Hick’s Theodicy. Afterword by John Hick. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993. Thoroughly evidentialist approach to the problem of evil, arguing that the positive evidence for God’s existence from natural theology is essential to answering the problem.

Geivett, R. Douglas, and Gary R. Habermas, eds. In Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God’s Action in History. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1997. Essays by leading evangelical apologists, many of whom are evidentialist or semi-evidentialist in their method (notably Beckwith, Craig, Geivett, Moreland, and Newman).

1Montgomery, “Death of the ‘Death of God,’” in Suicide of Christian Theology, 106.

2All parenthetical citations in this section are from Montgomery, History and Christianity. The same material is found in Montgomery, Where Is History Going, 37-52.

3C. Sanders, Introduction to Research in English Literary History (New York: Macmillan, 1952).

15Ibid., 209-212. On Daniel 9:24-27, see especially Harold W. Hoehner, Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978), which argues for an amazingly precise fulfillment of that prophecy in light of the date of Christ’s death. See also Robert C. Newman, “The Time of the Messiah,” in The Evidence of Prophecy, ed. Newman, 111-18. We discuss this prophecy in more detail in 20 Compelling Evidences that God Exists, 160-69.

21Montgomery, “Death of the ‘Death of God,’” in Suicide of Christian Theology, 141.

22Gary R. Habermas, “Resurrection Claims in Other Religions,” Religious Studies 25 (1989): 167-177; see also David K. Clark, “Miracles in the World Religions,” in In Defense of Miracles, ed. Geivett and Habermas, 199-213.

29See the works by Hugh Ross cited in chapter 9, n. 56; see also Newman, “The Evidence of Cosmology,” in Evidence for Faith, ed. Montgomery, 71-91; Fred Hereen, Show Me God: What the Message from Space Is Telling Us about God, Wonders That Witness, vol. 1 (Wheeling, Ill.: Searchlight Publications, 1995).

30In addition to the sources already cited, see Boa and Bowman, 20 Compelling Evidences that God Exists, 51-60, for an overview of the argument; more detailed treatments can be found in Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (New York: Norton, 1978); Stanley L. Jaki, God and the Cosmologists (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1989).

32Full-length treatments of this subject include John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); M. A. Corey, God and the New Cosmology: The Anthropic Design Argument (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993). Barrow and Tipler report the major findings but reject the idea of divine design; Corey finds the evidence supportive of a divine Designer and Creator.

33Hugh Ross, “Astronomical Evidences for a Personal, Transcendent God,” in The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer, ed. J. P. Moreland (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1994), 141-72; and in several of his books.

35The table is loosely based on tables by Hugh Ross, e.g., tables 14.1 and 16.1 in Creator and the Cosmos, 154, 188.

36In 2004, Antony Flew acknowledged that recent scientific discoveries had convinced him that some kind of God along the lines of Aristotle’s “God” (a powerful, intelligent being that is the uncaused cause of the universe) probably exists. However, Flew still denied that God had revealed himself in Christianity or any other religion. See “My Pilgrimage from Atheism to Theism: A Discussion between Antony Flew and Gary Habermas,” Philosophia Christi 6 (2004): 197-211. Flew’s extensive discussions and debates with Habermas and other evangelical apologists directly contributed to his rethinking his longstanding position of atheism. However, subsequent publications, including the short introduction to a new edition of Flew’s classic atheist book God and Philosophy (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2005), suggest that Flew’s belief in a God was not yet a settled conviction.

37Montgomery, “Death of the ‘Death of God,’” in Suicide of Christian Theology, 101.

38All parenthetical citations here and in the following paragraph are from Geivett, Evil and the Evidence for God.

39Quotations in this paragraph are taken from John E. Hare, “The Problem of Evil,” in Evidence for Faith, edited by Montgomery, 231-52.

41Beckwith, David Hume’s Argument against Miracles; see also his “History and Miracles,” in In Defense of Miracles, edited by Geivett and Habermas, 86-98. Parenthetical references in this section are to the former work by Beckwith; emphasis is in the original.

42The inclusion of levitation is odd, but Beckwith likely had the Ascension in mind.

44The expression “convergence of independent probabilities” comes from Montgomery, who in turn attributes it to Cardinal John Henry Newman; see Beckwith, “History and Miracles,” in In Defense of Miracles, ed. Geivett and Habermas, 98; cf. Montgomery, Faith Founded on Fact, 55.

47Craig, The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus During the Deist Controversy (1985); Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity, vol. 16 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989); Knowing the Truth about the Resurrection (Ann Arbor: Servant, 1991); Reasonable Faith (1994), 255-98; “Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?” in Jesus Under Fire, ed. Michael J. Wilkins and J. P. Moreland (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 141-176; “The Empty Tomb of Jesus,” in In Defense of Miracles, edited by Geivett and Habermas (1997), 247-261; and Craig and John Dominic Crossan, Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? (1998).

48For example, Habermas and Flew, Did Jesus Rise from the Dead, 19-20; Craig and Crossan, Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up, 26-28; and especially Habermas and Licona, Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, 43-77. See also Boa and Moody, I’m Glad You Asked, 64-66.

55Habermas and Licona, Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, 171. Perhaps we should note that this argument works better if one qualifies it to say that Jesus’ resurrection would not be a total surprise in retrospect. The Gospels themselves report that the disciples were quite surprised, no doubt because no amount of preparation could overcome the shock of Jesus’ horrific death and the seeming end it put to all their hopes (cf. Luke 24:21).

12. Apologetics and the Interpretation of Fact

In this concluding chapter on evidentialist apologetics, we will summarize this model or paradigm for apologetics, illustrate its use in practical apologetic encounters, and then consider its major strengths and weaknesses.

The Evidentialist Model

As explained in chapter 3, we are summarizing each model of apologetic system under two headings (metapologetics and apologetics) and six specific questions under each heading. Here we apply this analysis to the evidentialist model.

Metapologetic Questions

Metapologetic questions deal with the relation of apologetics to other forms of human knowledge. In chapter 9 we considered the evidentialist approach to answering questions about knowledge in general, theology, philosophy, science, history, and experience. Here we summarize our findings in that chapter.

1. On what basis do we claim that Christianity is the truth?

In broad terms we have distinguished the evidentialist approach from the classical approach in a number of ways. Classical apologetics is characteristically dominated by deductive reasoning and seeks to base its case on a foundation of select, rationally certain truths. Evidentialist apologetics is dominated by inductive, empirical reasoning and seeks to build its case from a mass of factual evidences. The classical approach typically launches its argument in two stages: the first seeks to prove the theistic worldview, while the second, building on the first, seeks to prove the specific, central claims of the Christian faith. The evidentialist approach typically involves one complex process of mounting a case for the truth of the whole of the Christian theistic faith, though almost always with the case turning on the evidence for Jesus’ death and resurrection.

The two approaches make common cause in rejecting outright the philosophical movement known as postmodernism. Both emphasize the irrational nature of the relativism that is at the heart of the postmodernist agenda. Whereas classical apologists typically analyze postmodernism as a philosophy or worldview, though, evidentialists often treat it more as a cultural trend that at bottom is still modernist. Postmodernists are really not relativists; they have instead substituted a new set of absolutes or standards for the Judeo-Christian absolutes. In matters of ordinary fact, evidentialists find that most people today still operate on the assumption that the facts are objective, knowable truths. At least some evidentialists in this sense affirm that facts “speak for themselves.”

Evidentialists do not believe, however, that factual evidence in and of itself produces faith, and in fact most of them deny believing that faith requires evidence; faith is based on the witness of the Holy Spirit. Evidentialists do maintain that what sets Christianity apart from other religions is that it is rooted in facts that are in principle verifiable on the basis of publicly accessible evidence.

2. What is the relationship between apologetics and theology?

Evidentialists view the relationship between apologetics and theology as one of defense and exposition of the same truth. That is, apologetics offers a reasoned defense of the Christian beliefs that are explained and defined in theology. Moreover, apologetics and theology utilize essentially the same method. Both reason inductively from the data or facts to conclusions using a method similar to what is used in the sciences. The apologist appeals to facts about and from the Bible to show that Christianity is true; the theologian appeals to facts of the Bible to show what Christianity means. Most evidentialists are not Reformed in theology; they run a gamut from moderately conservative, Arminian Protestants (for example, Swinburne, Pinnock) to very conservative Lutherans (Montgomery).

3. Should apologetics engage in a philosophical defense of the Christian faith?

Evidentialists view philosophy as a critical tool for understanding the implications of the sciences in matters beyond the sciences’ direct competency. For example, while the sciences cannot examine God, they can examine the world he created and infer his existence from the evidence in the world. Thus evidentialists do use philosophy, but primarily as a means of clarifying concepts and analyzing the methods and reasoning used in discussing matters of theological significance in the light of natural science and of human history. For evidentialists, when philosophy seeks to construct positive answers to ultimate issues apart from facts, it is merely speculative.

4. Can science be used to defend the Christian faith?

Of the four apologetic approaches, evidentialism makes the most positive use of science. While evidentialists do not accept all conventional scientific theories uncritically, they tend to be more confident in their use of scientific information and theories to support theistic conclusions than the other approaches. They also tend to adhere to a realist view of science—typically assuming such a view without discussion. Some evidentialists are theistic evolutionists, but most are old-earth creationists.

5. Can the Christian faith be supported by historical inquiry?

While evidentialists tend to make confident and even enthusiastic use of science in apologetics, most of them base their apologetic primarily, and in some cases exclusively, on historical evidence. In their view the Christian faith in its essence involves belief that God has done certain things in history for our salvation, specifically in the death and resurrection of Jesus. They recognize that many people view historical knowledge as too subjective or uncertain to be the basis of faith. They admit that historical knowledge as such can never rise above probability, but contend that this is so with all knowledge of matters of fact, yet we base life-and-death decisions on such knowledge every day. Furthermore, they argue that there is plenty of evidence for the historicity of the central events of the Christian faith.

6. How is our knowledge of Christian truth related to our experience?

Evidentialists recognize that people have religious experiences. However, while they acknowledge that some of these are genuine encounters with God, they point out that such experiences are also common in non-Christian religions. Personal, subjective experiences are meaningful or helpful only to the persons experiencing them. If we are to commend the truth of Christianity to people, evidentialists conclude, we must appeal to publicly accessible facts. Testimonies of changed lives may help people see that Christianity is not only about events in the past, but the “evidence that demands a verdict” is to be found in history.

Apologetic Questions

Apologetic questions deal with issues commonly raised by non-Christians themselves. In chapter 10 we considered the approach evidentialism takes to answering questions about the Bible, Christianity and other beliefs, the existence of God, the problem of evil, the credibility of miracles, and the claims of Jesus Christ. Here we summarize our findings in that chapter.

1. Why should we believe in the Bible?

Most evidentialists begin their apologetic by presenting evidence, not for the inspiration of the Bible, but for its historical reliability. They emphasize the authenticity of the biblical text as it has been passed down through the centuries as well as the historical credibility of its contents. In particular they focus on the historical value of the Gospels and Paul’s epistles as source material for information about Jesus’ death and resurrection. They want to use this material to present their central apologetic argument, namely, that the historical facts show that Jesus rose from the dead. In turn, Jesus’ resurrection will validate Jesus’ teaching and, by extension, the teaching of the entire Bible.

Like classical apologists, then, evidentialists affirm that we believe in the Bible because we believe in the God revealed in Christ—not the other way around. But for evidentialists it is not necessary to convince people that a God exists before presenting evidence for the divine inspiration of the Bible. In addition to the historical argument outlined above, they appeal to fulfilled prophecy as evidence arising from the Bible itself for the existence of a God who knows the future.

2. Don’t all religions lead to God?

The major premise of religious pluralism is that all religions are basically alike. Evidentialists attack this premise directly by appealing to the historically verifiable miracles of the Bible, especially the resurrection of Jesus, as proof of the uniqueness of Christianity. Whereas other religions represent mankind’s best guesses, intuitions, or mystical religious experiences, none of which can be verified as based on truth, Christianity alone represents God’s direct intervention into human history to redeem mankind.

3. How do we know that God exists?

Evidentialists typically do not reject the classical theistic proofs (other than the ontological argument, which all evidentialists reject). However, they do rework them into fact-based, evidentiary arguments to augment or replace the classical deductive, philosophical proofs. The cosmological and teleological arguments are the arguments of choice here, commonly articulated using the scientific evidence for the big bang (which proves the universe had a beginning) and for the intricate, delicate balance and design of the universe to sustain life. Evidentialists also point to miracles, fulfilled prophecy, and other evidences from the Bible to support belief in the existence of God.

4. If God does exist, why does he permit evil?

Classical apologists usually address the problem of evil in its most historically familiar form as a logical conundrum: How can God be all-powerful and all-loving, yet permit evil? Evidentialists may discuss the problem in this form, too, but they most characteristically deal with it as a matter of probability or evidence. That is, in more recent anti-theistic polemic the nontheist often adduces the great, often inexplicable evils of the world not as a logical disproof of God’s existence, but as evidence showing God’s existence to be improbable or unlikely. In turn, the evidentialist seeks to answer whether these evils really are evidence that “counts” against God’s existence, and also whether there is sufficient evidence in favor of God’s existence to counterbalance the evidence of evil. Evidentialists point out various reasons why certain evils may be present in the world, and argue that the positive evidence for God’s existence is so great that the problem of evil does not make his existence unlikely.

5. Aren’t the miracles of the Bible spiritual myths or legends and not literal fact?

To the question of whether miracles are myths or facts, evidentialists answer simply, look at the evidence. They agree that it is reasonable to be somewhat skeptical of miracle claims; they insist, though, that it is unreasonable to decide that no amount of evidence could ever warrant belief that a miracle had occurred. While belief in God certainly makes miracle claims somewhat more believable, one still must question such claims and determine if there is evidence for them. Moreover, evidentialists maintain that in some cases the evidence for a miracle is so great that even a person who does not already believe in God can and should recognize it as a miracle. Thus they think the evidence for miracles can provide rational grounds for belief in God’s existence.

6. Why should I believe in Jesus?

Nearly all evidentialists view the resurrection of Jesus as the primary factual basis for faith in Jesus. It is Jesus’ resurrection that vindicates his claim to be the Messiah, the Son of God, and that also reveals his death to have been a redemptive sacrifice for sins. The origin and history of the church would be unintelligible without the Resurrection. Other lines of evidence—for creation, for the historical reliability of the Bible, for the life and miracles of Jesus, for fulfilled prophecy in the Bible—supplement and converge on this point. Evidentialists argue that people should believe in Jesus because the facts show him to be what the Bible says he is.

The following table presents an overview of the evidentialist model of apologetics with these twelve questions in mind.

Issue

Position

Metapologetics

Knowledge

Fitting of the facts is the primary test of truth

Postmodernism is unrealistic

Spirit’s witness is the ground of faith

Theology

Apologetics and theology use scientific method

Apologetics defends debated aspects of theology

Philosophy

Apologetics uses philosophy’s critical tools

Methodological use of non-Christian philosophy

Science

Freely accepts established theories

Science and theology view same facts differently

Typically old-earth creationism

History

Objective view of history quite realizable

Right view of history requires right method

Experience

Religious experiences possible but not reliable

Test private experiences by public facts

Apologetics

Scripture

Scripture the source of evidence for apologetic

Begin with reliability, conclude with inspiration

Fulfilled prophecy proves inspiration, proves God

Religions

Religious pluralism ignores gospel’s factual basis

Christianity makes uniquely verifiable claims

God

Generally inductive proofs favored

Design argument most common

Evil

Inductive problem of evil: Is theism likely?

Evidence for God holds up despite evil

Miracles

Miracles add evidence for a theistic worldview

Miracles not to be believed unless good evidence

Jesus

Jesus’ resurrection can be proved historically

False dilemma: Jesus of history or Christ of faith

Evidentialism Illustrated

In this second of four dialogues we will present in this book, a Christian named Joe becomes involved in a discussion with Sarah and Murali while riding a city bus. Joe is a researcher in the city’s police crime lab. He has read a lot about, and talked with people of, various different religions, and is especially interested in the New Age movement. Joe likes a variety of apologetics authors, including John Warwick Montgomery. When he boards the bus, he sits in front of Sarah and Murali, who are already deep in conversation about a devastating earthquake that has been in the news.

Murali: In India, where I come from, most people believe that things like this happen because of karma. The people who died in the earthquake were meant to die, and they will come back in reincarnation to live again.

Sarah: Some people here in America believe that, too, but I don’t. I don’t think there’s any life after death. When you die, that’s it.

Murali: You may be right, although I hope not. I don’t know what I think about this anymore. I don’t think anybody really knows. Our religions help us feel better about life, and they may be right about there being life after death, but no one knows for sure.

Joe: Excuse me—I couldn’t help overhearing what you were talking about. My name is Joe. May I say something?

Murali: Of course. I am Murali, and this is Sarah.

Joe: I think it is possible to know about life after death.

Murali: How?

Joe: Well, suppose someone died and then came back to life, and he was able to tell you about what lies beyond death and how we need to prepare for it. That would be one way to know.

Sarah: Yeah, but no one has ever done that.

Joe: Actually, someone has. Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead, and he has told us all about God and how we can live forever in God’s presence.

Sarah: Oh, no. You’re one of those Bible-thumping Christians. Murali, you gotta watch out for these guys. They’re always going around saying that you have to believe in Jesus.

Joe: Guilty as charged, although I promise not to thump you with my Bible. I did bring one, though.

Murali: I have heard this before, of course, that Jesus rose from the dead. It is a beautiful story, but you don’t take it literally, do you?

Joe: Again, guilty as charged. I certainly do take it literally. Jesus is not a mythical character. He was a real, flesh-and-blood man who lived almost two thousand years ago in a real place.

Murali: Yes, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to suggest that Jesus never lived. That is obvious. But the story of his coming back to life—why would you take that literally?

Joe: Well, for one thing, because the people who first told this “story” said that it really happened. They specifically denied that it was a made-up story.

Murali: When did they say that?

Sarah: Now you’ve gone and done it. He’s going to start quoting the Bible at you.

Joe: You’re right, Sarah, but I won’t ask you or Murali to take the Bible’s word for anything. In fact, I encourage you to examine the evidence to see whether what the Bible writers say about Jesus is true or not.

Murali: That seems fair.

Joe: In 2 Peter 1:16 the apostle Peter wrote, “For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.” You see, Peter is saying that the stories they told about Jesus were not made-up myths or fairy tales, but were eyewitness testimony. And you find this kind of statement throughout the New Testament.

Sarah: But everyone knows that these things were written down long after Jesus had died. Scholars say the Gospels were written about a hundred years after Jesus.

Joe: I’m curious about those scholars. But before I say anything about that, can we agree at least that the New Testament claims that the resurrection of Jesus is not a myth, but is an historical fact told to us by eyewitnesses?

Murali: That does seem to be what it claims, yes. At least in that one verse that you read to us.

Sarah: Well, I’m not convinced. How do you know that the Gospels claim to be historical fact?

Joe: A fair question. Let me give you a couple of easy examples. In Luke 1:1-4, Luke tells us that there were “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word,” and that these eyewitnesses had “handed down” to us what had happened. And Luke says that he “investigated everything carefully from the beginning” before writing it down, “so that you might know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.” In other words, Luke says his Gospel is based on eyewitness testimony, and that he did historical research in order to write an accurate account. Now in the Gospel of John, it tells us that soldiers stabbed Jesus on the cross with a spear to make sure he was dead. The author then says in John 19:35, “And he who has seen has borne witness, and his witness is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you also may believe.” So, the author of the Gospel of John claims to have been an eyewitness to the death of Jesus, as well as to many other things, of course.

Sarah: All right, I guess the Gospels, or at least those two Gospels, claim to be telling historical fact. But how can we be sure about anything they tell us? Like I said, they were written about a hundred years after the fact.

Joe: You did say that. But Sarah, the fact is that no biblical scholar says the Gospels were written a hundred years later. Jesus died in a.d. 33. The latest dates given by scholars put the Gospel of Mark around the year 70, about forty years after Jesus’ death, and the Gospel of John around the year 100, or about seventy years after Jesus’ death. And some biblical scholars, including the radical theologian John A. T. Robinson, have argued that all of the Gospels were written before the year 70. I have some literature on this subject that I can get for you if you’re interested.

Murali: You seem to know what you’re talking about. But even forty years is a long time. Isn’t it possible that the story of Jesus developed over the years into the story we now have?

Joe: I don’t see how, if John was himself an eyewitness, as he says he was. Besides, the Gospels aren’t the earliest books of the New Testament. The epistles of the apostle Paul were written between about the years 50 and 65. In other words, Paul was writing about Jesus’ resurrection less than twenty years after it happened. And Paul himself saw Jesus alive after his death.

Sarah: It’s my understanding that some of those epistles weren’t even written by Paul.

Joe: That is the opinion of many scholars today, but by no means all of them. But I’ll tell you what. I’ll stick to the epistles that all biblical scholars agree were written by Paul. For example, in Galatians, which was one of Paul’s first epistles, he writes at length about the fact that he was a persecutor of the church until Jesus appeared to him and called him to be an apostle. And in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says he and the other apostles all had the same message, which was that Jesus had died, had been buried, had been raised from the dead, and had appeared to them and to many others. So here we see proof that Christians had been proclaiming Jesus’ resurrection as an historical fact from the very beginning of the church. It wasn’t a myth that developed gradually over many years.

Murali: This is very interesting. I have never heard these facts before. But tell me, Joe: Are you saying that Paul and these other apostles actually saw Jesus alive from the dead? Could it be that what they experienced was some sort of vision? Perhaps they had a vision of Jesus in a higher state of consciousness, and they gained comfort and encouragement from that vision.

Joe: That’s a good question. I think Paul is very clear about what he means. Let me read 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 to you. It says “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried.” Now, let me stop right there. Why do you suppose Paul mentioned Jesus’ burial? Why would that be important?

Murali: Now it is your turn to ask a good question. I don’t know. Perhaps he mentioned it to make the point that Jesus was really dead?

Joe: Excellent! I think you’re exactly right. Now, the next thing Paul says is “that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared.” Let me stop there again. Paul says that Jesus died, and then he points to Jesus’ burial as proof of that fact. Paul then says that Jesus was raised, and he points to Jesus’ appearances as proof of his resurrection. When you take it all together, it’s clear that Paul is talking about Jesus being raised physically from the grave. That’s the whole point of mentioning Jesus’ burial between his death and resurrection. Remember, Paul was a Pharisee, a Jewish rabbi, who had become a Christian. In his vocabulary, for a man to be buried and then to have been raised meant just one thing: the man’s grave was empty and he was alive from the dead.

Sarah: You may be right; that may have been what Paul was saying. But why should we believe him? Why should we take his word for it?

Joe: What are the alternatives? If Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead, why do you suppose Paul would say that he had been? Was he lying?

Sarah: No, I don’t think he was lying. Maybe Paul had some kind of hallucination and thought he saw Jesus.

Joe: What about all of the others who saw Jesus? Paul mentions that Jesus appeared to Peter, the other apostles, and to more than five hundred people at one time. Were they all hallucinating?

Sarah: Well, I don’t know if I take that five hundred number seriously.

Joe: I don’t know why not. But let’s leave them aside, if you like. Do you really think that Peter, James, and the other apostles all had hallucinations of Jesus? That doesn’t seem very likely, does it?

Sarah: It seems much more likely than the idea that a dead man came back to life.

Joe: Normally, Sarah, I’d agree with you. But in this case, the idea that Jesus came back to life is much more likely to be true than that over a dozen men, some of whom loved Jesus, some of whom hated Jesus, all had hallucinations of Jesus alive from the dead. You see, if we heard that your aunt Edna or my cousin Jasper had died and come back to life, we’d probably dismiss the idea out of hand. After all, why should Aunt Edna or Cousin Jasper rise from the dead? There’s no rhyme or reason to it. But with Jesus, there is a very good reason. Jesus claimed to be the Messiah. He claimed to have come to overcome sin and death for all humanity, and to bring eternal life. He is reported to have performed many miracles, including resuscitating people who had died. He was executed on Passover, a Jewish feast that celebrated God’s deliverance of his people from bondage. Given all that we know about Jesus, his being raised from the dead makes perfect sense. God raised him from the dead to vindicate him as the Messiah and to bring to us the promise of eternal life if we trust in him.

Murali: You make an interesting case. But what you just said bothers me. You are saying, if I understand you correctly, that one must believe in Jesus to have eternal life. But I cannot accept the idea that God loves Christians but does not love Hindus or Buddhists or Muslims. Throughout the world for centuries people have killed each other because they were of a different religion. This intolerance is so destructive.

Joe: I certainly agree with you that it is terribly wrong to kill people because they are of a different religion. In fact, my religion considers such killing to be a grievous sin. We believe that God loves people of all nations and races, and it is our duty to tell them the good news of God’s love for them in Jesus Christ.

Murali: But why must they believe in Jesus to have God’s love? Surely God already loves them.

Joe: In a sense, you’re right, of course. But there is a problem. We human beings—all of us, of whatever religion, or of no religion—are sinners.

Sarah: That’s so judgmental.

Joe: Not at all. I’m not saying anything about you or anyone else that doesn’t also apply to me. I’m a sinner, too. None of us is morally perfect, and all of us are alienated from God until we come to faith in Jesus Christ.

Murali: This idea of sin is difficult for me. But I see that my stop is coming up. I must go.

Sarah: Me, too. It’s been interesting, Joe.

Murali: Yes, very.

Joe: Let me give you my phone number and e-mail address and you can contact me at your convenience if you decide you’d like to continue this discussion.

Murali and Sarah: Okay!

Notable Strengths of Evidentialist Apologetics

As we did with classical apologetics in chapter 7, we will here review the most common and important observations that have been made as to the notable strengths and potential weaknesses of the evidentialist apologetic model.

Recognizes That Probability Is Unavoidable

Evidentialists readily admit that the conclusions available through the inductive process of historical inquiry are probable, not certain. But they are quick to add that no decision in life is based on deductive certainty. Deduction can reveal whether a conclusion follows from certain premises, but it cannot tell us whether premises correspond to truth about the real world. In all matters of fact, we are dependent on human observation and human interpretation, both of which are fallible. Because we will never have all the facts, we can never arrive at absolute certainty from our analysis and interpretation of the facts. But this does not stop us from reaching conclusions and making decisions in law courts, scientific laboratories, or business meetings. William Dyrness observes that “it is inadmissible to ask more of a line of reasoning than it can possibly give. Historical judgments are based on available records. No historical data can ever be conclusive. In historical reasoning, therefore, we can expect only probability, and we must not be disappointed when we cannot have certainty. The uncertainty here is not with Christianity, but with the tenuous nature of historical argumentation.”1

Even if the validity of inductive, probabilistic arguments is acknowledged, the way such arguments are developed is often questioned. For example, some critics regard the cumulative-case approach to argumentation, frequently used by evidentialists, as akin to a series of leaky buckets. Antony Flew put the point most succinctly: “If one leaky bucket will not hold water there is no reason to think that ten can.”2 This is not to say that Flew rejected all empirical argument. However, he distinguished cumulative arguments in which each element has real evidentiary value from those in which each element is really valueless. “We have here to insist upon a sometimes tricky distinction: between, on the one hand, the valid principle of the accumulation of evidence, where every item has at least some weight in its own right; and, on the other hand, the Ten-leaky-buckets-Tactic, applied to arguments none of which hold water at all.”3

Richard Swinburne addresses the leaky-bucket objection head-on: “For clearly if you jam ten leaky buckets together in such a way that holes in the bottom of each bucket are squashed close to solid parts of the bottoms of neighbouring buckets, you will get a container that will hold water.”4 Douglas Geivett, though, worries that Swinburne’s super bucket “can be expected, at best, to retard the leak,” not to “prevent eventual drainage.”5 He distinguishes the approach of inference to the best explanation from the informal cumulative-case approach of Basil Mitchell and the rigorously formal use of confirmation theory by Swinburne to build a cumulative-case argument.

Some evidentialists prefer the analogy of a rope. Irwin H. Linton, in A Lawyer Examines the Bible, writes: “It is a commonplace that while one thread of a three stranded rope may possibly be broken, the three strands twisted together and each multiplying the strength of the others may produce a tensile strength beyond the power to overcome.”6 J. P. Moreland, an apologist whose approach straddles the classical and evidentialist models, states flatly that “the leaky bucket metaphor is the wrong one. A rope metaphor is more appropriate. Just as several strands make a rope stronger than just a few strands, so the many-stranded case for God is made stronger than would be the case with only a few strands of evidence.”7

The leaky-bucket analogy is just that, an analogy. While it makes a valid point, it may have been overanalyzed a bit. Flew himself acknowledged that one may argue from an accumulation of evidence. His caution is one that many evidentialists take seriously. It does not overturn the fact that arguments designed to show that something is true in the real world will inevitably fall short of demonstrative, deductive proof.

Appealing Methods of Inquiry

One of the great strengths of the evidentialist approach is its use of methods of inquiry already familiar and acceptable to many non-Christians. As Mark Hanna acknowledges, evidentialism “recognizes the unavoidability of making use of ordinary ways of knowing in order to become aware of God’s self-revelation in Scripture.”8 Since the goal of apologetics is to persuade people that Christianity is true, or at least that it is reasonable to believe it is true, arguments that employ strategies familiar to those being persuaded are so much more likely to be effective. And it is undeniable that evidentialist apologetics has enjoyed great success.

Evidentialists emphasize that daily communication between believers and unbelievers requires a commonly held logic and world of experience.9 Without this commonality, communication and dialogue would be impossible.

Stresses the Factual Evidence

If the goal of Christian apologetics is to defend the truth of Christianity, and if truth is understood as correspondence with reality, then an apologetic that emphasizes the factual reality of Christianity is mandatory. Evidentialism is defined by the primacy it assigns to fact. Montgomery argues that the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, which teaches that God entered the human sphere in the person of the God-man, repudiates any attempt to divorce “Christian facts” from secular, nonreligious facts.10 Truth must be factually based, and Christian truth can be verified by objective, public evidence.

Evidentialists stress the importance of empirical content in the substantiation of the Christian worldview. They focus on the historicity of Christianity and approach the Bible as a primary historical document. Montgomery has made a particularly significant contribution in this regard. As Ronald H. Nash has stated, “No conservative theologian has done more to articulate the nature and importance of the relationship between Christian faith and history than John Warwick Montgomery.”11 Even some of his critics acknowledge the importance of his stress on the empirical study and investigation of history.12 For Montgomery, the historical Incarnation provides an answer to Flew’s parable of the gardener, because “central to the Christian position is the historically grounded assertion that the Gardener entered the garden: God actually appeared in the empirical world in Jesus Christ and fully manifested his deity through miraculous acts in general and his resurrection from the dead in particular.”13

Montgomery claims that if the Resurrection event is granted, it cannot be regarded as trivial because of its profound implications for the universal problem of death.14 The fact of the Resurrection and its meaning are conjoined in the context of Christ’s own claims. “Christ’s resurrection can be examined by non-Christians as well as by Christians. Its factual character, when considered in light of the claims of the One raised from the dead, points not to a multiplicity of equally possible interpretations, but to a single ‘best’ interpretation (to an interpretation most consistent with the data), namely the deity of Christ (John 2:18-22).”15

Not all evidentialists agree with Montgomery that historical events are self-interpreting, but they agree that while facts do not create faith, they are essential for faith. R. N. Williams writes that a perceptual shift can take place in the logic of the whole situation that can move a person beyond the level of fact to an illumination of the facts from a new perspective. In this sense biblical miracles “were intended to conduct, not to compel, men to faith.”16 Fact does not force faith, but faith cannot be divorced from fact. Montgomery argues that the factual evidence leaves non-Christians with no excuse:

Of course, sinful self-interest may tempt the non-Christian to avoid the weight of evidence, just as self-interest has so frequently corrupted investigation in other purely secular matters. But selfish perversions of data or interpretation can be made plain in the area of revelational fact no less than in the nonrevelational sphere, for Christian revelation occurred in time—in the secular world. To miss this point is to miss the character of the Incarnation.17

Potential Weaknesses of Evidentialist Apologetics

Evidentialist apologetics has been widely criticized from a number of perspectives. We will consider here some of the most common and important criticisms identifying potential weaknesses in or challenges to the evidentialist approach.18

Assumes the Theistic Worldview

The principal objection to evidentialism from a classical apologetics perspective is that it attempts to make a case for the theistic worldview on the basis of facts. According to both classical apologists and most Reformed apologists, this will not work; one must first have a worldview before one can interpret the facts in the world. As Geisler puts it, “facts and events have ultimate meaning only within and by virtue of the context of the world view in which they are conceived.”19 Geisler explains that

evidence gains its meaning only by its immediate and overall context; and evidence as such cannot, without begging the question, be used to establish the overall context by which it obtains its very meaning as evidence. . . . it is a vicious circle to argue that a given fact (say, the resuscitation of Christ’s body) is evidence of a certain truth claim (say, Christ’s claim to be God), unless it can be established that the event comes in the context of a theistic universe.20

Geisler adds that meaning is not inherent in historical facts and events; meaning demands an interpretive context that is distinct from the facts and events.21 Apologists from other perspectives agree that evidentialists tacitly assume the validity of the theistic worldview from the beginning.22

One possible response to this criticism is that it assumes that non-Christians will rigorously screen out any and all facts that do not fit consistently in their worldviews, regardless of the evidence. No doubt non-Christians do this a lot, but the evidentialist thinks that the facts can also undermine those false worldviews when the evidence is cogently presented.

Uses Hidden Presuppositions

It is the contention of evidentialists that metaphysical presuppositions can be minimized in apologetics. Batts asserts that “Montgomery rightly emphasizes that the historical method (the scientific method as applied to historical phenomena) assumes as little as possible and provides for the objective discovery of as much as possible.”23 But critics of evidentialism contend that evidentialists work with hidden presuppositions about the nature of reality. For example, in their scientific and historical arguments, evidentialists presuppose that there is a rational structure to the whole of reality.24 The heuristic, methodological assumptions that knowledge is possible, that the universe is structured, and that the senses can be trusted cannot themselves be empirically substantiated.25 Clark charges that Montgomery as an empiricist is as much a “dogmatist” on sensation as the presuppositionalist is on revelation; he cannot provide any evidence for his own first principle.26 Carl F. H. Henry likewise states, “Empiricists always operate on presuppositions which they cannot prove by their own methodology.”27

Montgomery admits that “a prioris must lie at the basis of every procedure,” but says that “they should be kept to a minimum, and be as self-evident and beyond dispute as much as possible.”28 Because of this, Henry has commented that “Montgomery differs from the presuppositionalists he disowns only in the number and scope of the presuppositions he prefers for deciphering the meaning of history.”29

Montgomery’s presuppositions are not only epistemological but also metaphysical. “Metaphysical presuppositions are implicit in every epistemology, and epistemological presuppositions are implicit in every metaphysics.”30 It is therefore impossible to separate epistemological assumptions from metaphysical ones. The assumption that the mind can perceive reality, for example, is an assumption about reality, that is, a metaphysical assumption. Montgomery and all evidentialists unavoidably import Christian presuppositions into their apologetic methodology. Thom Notaro writes:

[Pinnock and Montgomery] seem unaware that they, as believers, are sitting on a gold-mine of presuppositions. In the past they have dipped into that hidden treasure most noticeably when confronted with the question of biblical inerrancy, yet without admitting the cash-value of the presuppositional method. . . . all Christian apologists presuppose certain biblical commitments, regardless of whether they are willing to call them presuppositions. The wide discrepancy between Christian apologists arises from the varying degrees of consistency with which they honor those commitments in their apologetic method.31

Evidentialists are generally unmoved by these concerns. They freely acknowledge that evidential arguments require certain assumptions about the reality of our physical world, the ability of the mind to perceive reality, and the like. What the evidentialist wants is not to make arguments that are totally free of presuppositions but rather arguments that presuppose only what must be presupposed to know anything at all. This challenge to the evidentialist approach, then, identifies a real limitation of the approach but one with which evidentialists insist everyone must live in order to know anything or reason about anything.

Underestimates the Human Factor

Both classical and evidentialist apologists are often criticized for an excessive optimism in assuming that unbelievers are willing and able to examine the evidence for Christianity in an open, honest, and unprejudiced way. Empirically oriented apologists in particular are said to place too much confidence in the persuasive value of evidences and erroneously assume a stance of historical objectivity, forgetting that the significance of historical facts is in fact determined by one’s presuppositional framework. For example, Henry declares that Pinnock’s empirical method

requires a herculean burden of demonstration that no evangelical theologian, however devout or brilliant, can successfully carry. For Pinnock seems to imply . . . that, without any appeal to transcendent divine revelation and by empirical considerations alone, the ordinary unregenerate man can be logically and inescapably driven to a Christian understanding of reality, and that any insistence on the invalidity of such empirical argumentation is due solely to volitional recalcitrance and not at all to empirical evidential deficiencies.32

Along similar lines, evidentialists are accused of unrealistically minimizing the effect of sin on unregenerate cognition and volition. According to critics, Montgomery and others overestimate the ability of the unbeliever, in Montgomery’s words, to “understand the factual nature of the world and rationally interpret the data of his experience.”33 Hillman, for example, who is critical of both the presuppositional and evidentialist models, contends, “If it is true that Van Til emphasizes too greatly the inability of man to perceive truth, then it is also true that Montgomery’s approach is too greatly weighted in favor of man’s ability to understand and to respond to the truth of God.”34 Some evidentialists, however, acknowledge the effects of sin on human reasoning; they appeal to the common and special grace of God in overcoming these cognitive and volitional barriers.

The following table summarizes the major notable strengths and potential weaknesses that have been perceived in the evidentialist model of apologetics.

Evidentialist Apologetics

Notable Strengths

Potential Weaknesses

Recognizes that probability cannot be avoided in apologetic arguments

Does not provide worldview context needed to assess probability

Uses methods of inquiry that are often appealing to non-Christians

Has hidden presuppositions in its application of the methods it uses

Emphasizes the importance of the factual evidence for Christianity

Diminishes the role of personal factors affecting perception of facts

Conclusion

So far we have examined two models of apologetics, the classical and evidentialist models. In some ways these two models are very similar. Both models attempt to make a case for the truth of Christianity that will be accessible to the non-Christian who follows the argument openly and honestly. The classical model is generally more rationalist while the evidentialist model is characteristically more empiricist. The classical model follows a two-step approach (prove theism, then prove Christianity on the assumption of theism), while the evidentialist model follows a cumulative-case approach (scientific and historical evidences combine to prove Christian theism). But the two strategies share a common understanding of the apologetic task: commending the Christian faith to non-Christians on the basis of truths that they already believe.

It is this very understanding of apologetics that is at the heart of many of the criticisms made of both models. Such an understanding, it has been urged, fails to take into account the great disparity between the Christian and non-Christian mindsets. The two models, many apologists now believe, both assume that Christianity can be proved to non-Christians on their own terms, without challenging their own most basic assumptions or presuppositions. To correct this faulty assumption, a third model of apologetics, which we call Reformed apologetics, has been developed. It is the Reformed approach that will be examined next.

For Further Study

Geisler, Norman L. Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999. See especially the article on “Historical Apologetics” (318-320) for an evaluation of the usual type of evidentialism.

Habermas, Gary R., and Antony G. N. Flew. Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? The Resurrection Debate. Edited by Terry L. Miethe. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987. An excellent example of an evidentialist in debate.

7J. P. Moreland, “Atheism and Leaky Buckets: The Christian Rope Pulls Tighter,” in Does God Exist? The Debate between Theists and Atheists (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1993), 240. Oddly, Moreland goes on to assert that a series of leaky buckets are “related to one another in a chain” while “strands of rope work independently of each other” (240-241). In fact, strands woven into a rope act in a mutual dependence in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

13. Reformed Apologetics: God Said It

Apologists Who Emphasize Revelation

With the decline throughout the twentieth century of the orthodox, supernaturalistic Christian worldview in American culture, it is understandable that many Christians have declared traditional apologetics a failure and have cast about for a new approach to defending the faith. In conservative Calvinistic or Reformed circles, several closely related apologetic systems have been developed as alternatives to both the classical and the evidentialist approaches. Most of these systems are known by the label presuppositionalism, although the term Reformed apologetics is more inclusive of the different systems to be considered here. The approach emphasizes the presentation of Christianity as revealed—as based on the authoritative revelation of God in Scripture and in Jesus Christ. Its most common forms find absolute and certain proof of Christianity in the absolute and certain character of the knowledge that God has and that he has revealed to humanity.

Because of his continuing importance for Christian theology and apologetics, and because there is considerable debate about his apologetic approach, we will begin by examining in some depth the apologetic thought of John Calvin himself. Following that we will discuss the modern roots of Reformed apologetics, and then consider the thought of four twentieth-century Reformed apologists.

John Calvin

The roots of Reformed apologetics actually go back prior to Calvin. Tertullian’s sharp antithesis between Jerusalem and Athens may be cited as the clearest anticipation of the Reformed approach in the ante-Nicene fathers. The mature Augustine, as well as the medieval philosopher Anselm, both explicitly insisted on faith leading to understanding. Although Augustine and Anselm were part of the classical tradition of apologetics, there is a side to their thinking that prepared for and established some precedent for the Reformed approach.1

Still, it was John Calvin, the sixteenth-century Reformer, who provided the underpinnings of modern Reformed apologetics.2 While it would be anachronistic to describe Calvin as a “Reformed apologist” in the technical sense used here, it is true that the Reformed approach is rooted in his theology. We begin our discussion of Calvin and apologetics by examining his most famous work, the Institutes of the Christian Religion.3

Basic to Calvin’s distinctive approach to apologetics is his strong doctrine of human sin. In his view, our fall into sin has corrupted our entire being, including our mind: “the reason of our mind, wherever it may turn, is miserably subject to vanity” (2.2.25). Thus our reasoning is now not only limited, but suspect. For this reason Calvin insists that the pagan philosophical ideal of “reason alone as the ruling principle in man,” the sole measure of truth and guide in life, be abandoned in favor of “the Christian philosophy” of submitting human reasoning to the Holy Spirit’s teaching in Scripture (3.7.1). Calvin’s rejection of any apologetic that is ultimately rationalistic is plain. Calvinists, following Calvin, have argued that the corrupting influences of sin on the human mind—what are often called the noetic effects of sin (from the Greek nous, “mind”)—must be taken seriously in the apologetic task.4

This does not mean that Calvin endorses irrationality. However much Scripture may contradict the reasoning of sinful, unbelieving men, in reality what it presents for faith is consistent, coherent, and reasonable. It is “a knowledge with which the best reason agrees” (1.7.5). The problem that unbelievers have is not that they are rational—they aren’t—but that they are ignorant of the truth.

Calvin’s conviction that Christianity is the truth influenced even the plan and structure of his chief work, the Institutes. As Ford Lewis Battles has shown, the opening chapters of the work present a series of contrasts or antitheses between the false, ignorant religious beliefs of the unbelieving and the true knowledge that is essential to Christian faith.

Modern interpreters are sharply divided on the question whether Calvin allowed for any sort of “natural theology” as part of a Christian apologetic.6 Some things, however, are clear. According to Calvin, God ought to be known from the “sense of divinity”(divinitatis sensum) within every human being (1.3.1).7 In addition, God “revealed himself and daily discloses himself in the whole workmanship of the universe” (1.5.1). Unfortunately, human depravity has rendered this internal and external general revelation incapable of creating a true knowledge of God, and humanity has corrupted the knowledge of God from natural revelation into idolatry or other forms of false worship (1.2.2; 1.10.3). As a result, Calvin concludes, natural revelation ends up giving fallen human beings just enough awareness of and information about God to render them without excuse for their unbelief (1.3.1; 1.5.14).

This negative judgment of the effect of natural revelation is the basis for what Alvin Plantinga has called “the Reformed objection to natural theology.”8 Ironically, in a sense Calvin himself seems to practice a kind of “natural theology” in book 1 of the Institutes. His argument—that human beings know there is a God from the sense of divinity and from the created works of nature—is drawn heavily from Cicero and other classical writers.9 The argument is a “way of seeking God [that] is common both to strangers and to those of his household” (1.5.6), that is, to both non-Christians and Christians. This is different from traditional natural theology in that, for Calvin, all that can be safely inferred from the argument is that human beings, left to themselves, are incapable of viewing God’s natural revelation correctly. Calvin goes on to argue that the true knowledge of God as Creator is to be learned in complete dependence on the special revelation of God in Scripture accompanied by the internal witness of the Holy Spirit (1.6-10).

Interpreters of Calvin generally agree that he had little use for the kinds of philosophical theistic proofs offered by Thomas Aquinas and other classical Christian apologists. In Calvin’s view, rigorous philosophical proofs for God’s existence are unnecessary because the evidences of God in nature are “so very manifest and obvious” that “no long or toilsome proof is needed to elicit evidences that serve to illuminate and affirm the divine majesty” (1.5.9). Moreover, because of our innate sense of divinity, the existence of God “is not a doctrine that must first be learned in school, but one of which each of us is master from his mother’s womb and which nature itself permits no one to forget, although many strive with every nerve to this end” (1.3.3). Also, such arguments cannot produce faith, since in Calvin’s teaching “the knowledge of faith consists in assurance rather than in comprehension” (3.2.14). For Calvin, faith must be characterized by an unshakable assurance that goes beyond what reasoned arguments can produce: “Such, then, is a conviction that requires no reasons; such, a knowledge with which the best reason agrees—in which the mind truly reposes more securely and constantly than in any reasons; such, finally, a feeling that can be born only of heavenly revelation” (1.7.5).

It follows, then, that we ought to “seek our conviction in a higher place than human reasons, judgments, or conjectures, that is, in the secret testimony of the Spirit” (1.7.4).10

Although Calvin questioned the value of theistic proofs, he did not question their validity. That is, he did not attempt to show that the Thomistic theistic proofs, or any other theistic arguments, were philosophically inadequate. He simply viewed them as of marginal value in producing the kind of assured knowledge of God that is characteristic of faith. For his purposes he preferred simple, concrete forms of the traditional theistic arguments. He offered short, simple proofs of “God’s power, goodness, and wisdom” from the power and grandeur evident in nature and from the marvelous design of the human being (1.5.1-3). These proofs are essentially concrete forms of the teleological argument. Calvin also presented a simple cosmological argument, writing that “he from whom all things draw their origin must be eternal and have beginning from himself” (1.5.6). Thus Calvin himself used forms of the traditional theistic arguments.11

Much of what Calvin says about theistic proofs applies also to the issue of evidences for Christianity. Ultimately, according to Calvin, our faith is produced by and depends on the testimony of the Holy Spirit, not reason: “the testimony of the Spirit is more excellent than all reason” (1.7.4). There are many good arguments for the truth of Scripture, “yet of themselves these are not strong enough to provide a firm faith, until our Heavenly Father, revealing his majesty there, lifts reverence for Scripture beyond the realm of controversy. . . . But those who wish to prove to unbelievers that Scripture is the Word of God are acting foolishly, for only by faith can this be known” (1.8.13).

Since Scripture is God’s Word, human reasoning of any kind cannot be used to judge the truth of Scripture; Scripture should not be subjected “to proof and reasoning.” Rather, all human reasoning must be subjected to Scripture as from God: “Therefore, illumined by his power, we believe neither by our own nor by anyone else’s judgment that Scripture is from God. . . . We seek no proofs, no marks of genuineness upon which our judgment may lean; but we subject our judgment and wit to it as to a thing far beyond any guesswork!” (1.7.5).

Calvin is not denying that “proofs” or “marks of genuineness” of the truth of Scripture exist. Rather, he is arguing that our ability to discover and verify such proofs or marks of genuineness by human reasoning should not be the foundation of our faith. To make such evidential arguments the basis of faith would be to place the authority of Scripture under the judgment of human reason.

Calvin allows for two legitimate uses of evidential arguments for the Christian faith. First, he teaches that they can be used to confirm the truth of Scripture to believers. We should not use them to try to produce faith in Scripture, and our assurance of faith must ever be sustained by the testimony of the Spirit to the divine truth of Scripture. Still, “once we have embraced” Scripture as God’s Word, “those arguments . . . become very useful aids” (1.8.1). Indeed, the same arguments that can be used to answer the objections of critics can also be the means by which “the dignity and majesty of Scripture are . . . confirmed in godly hearts” (1.8.13).

Second, Calvin teaches that such arguments can have the apologetic purpose of silencing critics of Scripture. For the most part this means using evidential arguments to answer objections. He insists that there are many reasons, “neither few nor weak,” by which Scripture can be “brilliantly vindicated against the wiles of its disparagers” (1.8.13).

He presents a very well developed apologetic for Scripture in book 1, chapter 8 of the Institutes. He defends the truth of Scripture by appealing to its antiquity and preservation, the candor of the biblical writings, fulfilled biblical prophecies, the preservation of the Jewish race as a miracle, the wisdom of the apostolic writings in contrast with their humble origins, the testimony of martyrs, and other evidences. He also defends the historicity of Moses and his miracles, the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and the reliability of the biblical texts (1.8.1-13).

Ramm summarizes Calvin’s position on the vindication of the Christian worldview:

Therefore the certification of the Christian faith is not to be found in the utterances of a proposed infallible Church; nor in rationalistic Christian evidences; nor in the appeals of philosophers to reason; nor is [sic] ecstatic experiences of the Holy Spirit. It is to be found in the knowledge of God as Creator and Redeemer; it is to be found in the union of Word and Spirit; it is to be found in special revelation centering on the person of Christ and affirmed by the inner witness of the Holy Spirit.12

Although Calvin’s most famous writing is the Institutes, his apologetic method is actually set forth in greatest detail in a little-known work called Concerning Scandals (1550). In this work he discusses in detail how Christians should deal with the stumbling blocks or “scandals” that non-Christians present as objections to the biblical, Reformed gospel.

Perhaps his simplest recommendation in this book is that the response should take into consideration the person to whom it is being given. In particular, he suggests that we concentrate our efforts on answering people who are troubled by objections and can be helped, not those who are clearly using objections as excuses for their unbelief. “I shall address myself to those who are indeed troubled by scandals of that kind, but who are still curable.”13

Calvin admits it is impossible to answer every objection to Christian faith (because of time constraints, if nothing else), and offers three points for dealing with this problem. (1) Read Scripture with the focus on going the way God’s Spirit is leading us and on our relationship with Christ, and we will find that way to be “a plain, consistent way.” (2) Do not try to be clever by overcomplicating questions that are difficult enough. (3) “Finally, if we find something that is strange and beyond our understanding, do not let us be quick to reject it.”14

Calvin also instructs Christians to recognize the “root cause” of objections to “the fundamentals of the Christian religion” in the demonic deception that grips the entire non-Christian world, namely, the lie that God need not be feared, that non-Christians are not in danger of judgment because of their sin. Such persons need to be confronted with their own sinfulness and the holiness of God before they will see their need of Christ: “You may therefore talk about Christ, but it is to no purpose except with those who are genuinely humbled and realize how much they need a Redeemer, by whose mediation they may escape the destruction of eternal death.”15

Modern Roots of the Reformed Approach

The modern roots of Reformed apologetics are to be found in two streams of Reformed or Calvinist theology: the Scottish Calvinist and Dutch Calvinist traditions.16 In Scotland the stream of thought that is especially important for the rise of Reformed apologetics is known as Common Sense Realism, the key figure of which was Thomas Reid.17

Thomas Reid

Thomas Reid is not very well known today, but he played a very significant role in the history of modern thought, and philosophers have recently been giving his thought renewed attention.18 Reid was one of David Hume’s most famous and important critics in his home country of Scotland. According to Reid, Hume’s skepticism was quite reasonable, given the guiding principles of Hume’s philosophy. Rather than try to disprove Hume on his own terms, Reid sought to expose and refute the “principles” or underlying assumptions of his position. “His reasoning appeared to me to be just: there was therefore a necessity to call in question the principles upon which it was founded, or to admit the conclusion.”19

Reid identified the faulty principle underlying Hume’s philosophy as rationalism—the belief that all knowledge had to be justified by reason, or reasoning. This presupposition had led René Descartes to doubt the reality of everything outside his own doubting, and George Berkeley to deny the independent reality of anything other than minds and their ideas. Now this same rationalistic premise had led Hume to question the possibility of knowing things that our senses and memories plainly tell us are so.

In direct opposition to such varying forms of skepticism, Reid proposed a principle of credulity—namely, that we ought to accept as true that which our mind, our senses, and our memories tell us is so unless we have good reasons to disbelieve them. As Kelly James Clark helpfully explains, the rationalists and skeptics had operated on a kind of “guilty until proven innocent” principle of rationality. Reid, by contrast, proposed an “innocent until proven guilty” principle. The former held that any belief was to be treated as suspect until it could be definitively proved true; Reid held that any belief was to be treated as justified until it could be shown to be false.20 We might put it this way: whereas the rationalists and skeptics made their motto “When in doubt, throw it out,” Reid advocated as the proper epistemological motto “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Reid’s principle of credulity is closely related to the principles of common sense, “certain principles which the constitution of our nature leads us to believe, and which we are under a necessity to take for granted in the common concerns of life, without being able to give a reason for them.”21 Even the skeptic who professes not to believe these principles acts as if they were true. “I never heard that any sceptic run his head against a post or stepped into a kennel, because he did not believe his eyes.”22

According to Reid, the validity of the principles of common sense is ultimately grounded in our creation by God. “Common sense and reason both have one author; that almighty Author, in all whose other works we observe a consistency, uniformity, and beauty, which charm and delight the understanding: there must therefore be some order and consistency in the human faculties, as well as in other parts of his workmanship.”23

As various scholars have pointed out, this does not mean that Reid thought one needed to believe in God in order to trust one’s senses. In Reid’s philosophy, belief in God provides a rational ground for belief in the reliability of one’s senses. The person who believes in God will regard God’s existence as “a good reason to confirm his belief” in the reliability of his senses. “But he had the belief before he could give this or any other reason for it.”24

Reid, then, appears to stop just short of including belief in God among the “principles of common sense.” God’s existence is, for Reid, the necessary presupposition of those principles, but not one of the principles themselves. Reid’s own approach to defending belief in God and in the Christian revelation would fit fairly comfortably in either the classical or evidentialist apologetic tradition.25 He favors the design or teleological argument as the principal one confirming the existence of God, on the grounds that “design and intelligence in the cause may, with certainty, be inferred from marks or signs of it in the effect.”26 In his Lectures on Natural Theology (1780), Reid contends that, although the existence of God is “so evident” from everything around us that argument may seem superfluous, the design argument can be useful in answering skeptics.27

Reid’s most distinctive argument for God’s existence is the argument from other minds. We believe that the people we see around us have minds, Reid pointed out, even though we have no direct access to those minds. Yet there is no good reason to doubt what we all know is true, namely, that there are other minds. From this premise Reid argued that “if a man has the same rational evidence for the existence of a Deity as he has for the existence of his father, his brother, or his friend, this, I apprehend, is sufficient to satisfy every man that has common sense.”28

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Reid’s approach to apologetics is his contention that, confronted with a purported revelation from God such as that found in Scripture, “reason must be employed to judge of that revelation; whether it comes from God.” Just as reason must be used to interpret the meaning of Scripture and to refute false interpretations of it, so also must it be used to determine whether Scripture really is revelation from God in the first place.29

Although Reid was a minister of the Church of Scotland and worked within the Calvinist tradition, there is reason to doubt that he held to strictly Calvinist theological beliefs. On the problem of evil, he took the position that evil exists because God permits people to abuse their power of “liberty” (or “free will,” as most people would say today). As Paul Helm observed, this explanation assumes “a very mild form of Calvinism, to say the least.”30

Because Reid employed the concept of “common sense” principles and held that our sense perceptions and memories should be assumed to correspond to reality and not be mere constructs of the mind, his epistemology became known as Common Sense Realism. This approach to knowledge was to play a significant role in the apologetics of the leading American evangelical seminary of the nineteenth century—Princeton.

Charles Hodge

Common Sense Realism greatly influenced American philosophy and theology in the nineteenth century,31 notably at Princeton Theological Seminary.32 In Part One we profiled the thought of one of Princeton’s last great theologians, B. B. Warfield. The dominant theologian at Princeton a generation before Warfield was Charles Hodge, whose Systematic Theology is still often reprinted and widely respected.33

Hodge’s indebtedness to the Common Sense Realist tradition is apparent from the opening pages of his work. In chapter 1, after defending the notion of theology as a science and disputing the validity of speculative and mystical approaches to it (1-9), he defends an inductive model of theology patterned after the natural sciences. He points out that the scientist “comes to the study of nature with certain assumptions,” notably “the trustworthiness of his sense perceptions”; “the trustworthiness of his mental operations,” such as memory and logical inference; and the certainty of such truths as “every effect must have a cause” (9).

According to Hodge, “The Bible is to the theologian what nature is to the man of science” (10). The theologian, like the scientist, “comes to his task with all the assumptions above mentioned.” He must also “assume the validity of those laws of belief which God has impressed upon our nature,” including “the essential distinction between right and wrong, . . . that sin deserves punishment, and other similar first truths, which God has implanted in the constitution of all moral beings, and which no objective revelation can possibly contradict.” Not just any beliefs can be assumed as such “first truths of reason,” though, or made “the source of test of Christian doctrines.” The first truths must be universally and necessarily believed (10). Although the term common sense is not itself used here, Hodge’s universal and necessary first truths represent essentially the same idea.

In chapter 2 Hodge argues for the necessity of a revealed theology. He distinguishes between natural theology, the knowledge of God gained from God’s revelation in nature, and Christian theology, which is based on the Bible. Regarding the former, he seeks to avoid two extremes: “The one is that the works of nature make no trustworthy revelation of the being and perfections of God; the other, that such revelation is so clear and comprehensive as to preclude the necessity of any supernatural revelation” (21-22). Hodge’s perspective here reflects his staunch Calvinism and is at least broadly in agreement with the approach taken by Calvin himself.

In the third chapter he discusses rationalism as a rival approach to the knowledge of God. Here Hodge is concerned first to refute deism, a form of rationalism that affirms the existence of a Creator God and yet denies any supernatural revelation from that God. Against the deists, he argues that such a revelation is possible and in fact has been supplied in Scripture, and he offers in support a fairly traditional battery of arguments, such as the unity of Scripture and fulfilled prophecy (37-38). In addition, he appeals to “the demonstration of the Spirit” by which people are convinced of the authority of God speaking in Scripture (39). Although Hodge’s articulation of the evidences for the revelatory character of Scripture has been influenced by the evidentialist tradition, the general shape and direction of his thought closely follows that of Calvin’s Institutes.

The second form of rationalism Hodge refutes is the variety that admits some revelation of God in Scripture but denies the absolute authority of Scripture. These rationalists will believe only those things in the Bible that they think they can comprehend and prove by reason. Hodge’s leading criticism of this rationalism is that “it is founded upon a false principle,” namely, that it is irrational to believe what one does not comprehend (40). Likewise, the dogmatic rationalism that claims to affirm the doctrines of Scripture on the basis of their fitting into a comprehensive philosophical system is also to be rejected on the “essentially false principle” of “the competency of reason to judge of things entirely beyond its sphere” (47). In line with the Common Sense Realist tradition, Hodge maintains that reason is competent in its sphere, as are our senses, but neither is competent to determine the truth about God:

Nothing, therefore, can be more opposed to the whole teaching and spirit of the Bible, than this disposition to insist on philosophical proof of the articles of our faith. . . . There is no safety for us, therefore, but to remain within the limits which God has assigned to us. Let us rely on our senses, within the sphere of our sense perceptions; on our reason within the sphere of rational truths; and on God, and God alone, in all that relates to the things of God (48, 49).

Having examined and critiqued three versions of rationalism, Hodge sets forth what he understands to be the proper role of reason in Christian theology. At this point his affinity for the evidentialist approach comes to the fore. He points out, first, that revelation is a communication from God directed to the human mind, and therefore to human reason (49-50). He then affirms that “it is the prerogative of reason to judge of the credibility of a revelation” (50). “Christians concede to reason the judicium contradictionis, that is, the prerogative of deciding whether a thing is possible or impossible.” And it is impossible, Hodge urges, for God to reveal anything that is morally wrong, self-contradictory, or contradictory to “any of the laws of belief which He has impressed upon our nature” (51).

Third, Hodge argues that “reason must judge of the evidence by which a revelation is supported” (53). In support of this position he reasons “that as faith involves assent, and assent is conviction produced by evidence, it follows that faith without evidence is either irrational or impossible.” This evidence must be “such as to command assent in every well-constituted mind to which it is presented” (53). Hodge here seems to agree not only with a broadly evidentialist approach to apologetics, but with the strong epistemological evidentialism enunciated famously in Clifford’s maxim.

Like Thomas Reid, then, Charles Hodge was a Calvinist whose thought had strong affinities with both the classical and the evidentialist approaches to apologetics. Nevertheless, certain aspects of their thought, especially in their epistemology, were preparing the way for a new and distinctively Reformed approach to apologetics.

Abraham Kuyper

Contributing also to the rise of Reformed apologetics was the tradition within Dutch Calvinist thought, originating primarily with Abraham Kuyper (rhymes with hyper). Dutch Calvinism was keenly concerned about the rise of secularization, the principled exclusion of faith from the ordinary activities of life, including the sciences, the arts, and politics.34 The key figure in this stream of Reformed theology was Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920), an influential Dutch Calvinist theologian and politician.35 The middle third of his most significant work, Theological Encyclopedia, has been translated into English as Principles of Sacred Theology.36 In it Kuyper sought to keep two doctrines in balance, common grace and particular grace, both of which he understood to flow directly from Calvinist theology. Common grace in Calvinism is the doctrine that, despite the universality and incorrigibility of sin in the human race (what Calvinists call total depravity), God graciously preserves non-Christian individuals and societies from becoming as bad as they could be. According to Kuyper, the Calvinist explains “that which is good in fallen man by the dogma of common grace” (123). God “has interfered in the life of the individual, in the life of mankind as a whole, and in the life of nature itself by His common grace” (123). By common grace God is “making it possible for men to dwell together in a well-ordered society” (125). That is, common grace explains why non-Christians can hold down jobs, learn true things about the world, care for their families, and maintain order in society.37 Through it non-Christians can also retain some awareness of God’s existence and their need for God, as expressed in religion. “Sin, indeed, is an absolute darkening power, and were not its effect temporarily checked, nothing but absolute darkness would have remained in and about man; but common grace has restrained its workings to a very considerable degree; also in order that the sinner might be without excuse” (302).

Common grace, though, needed to be balanced by a second doctrine. Kuyper stressed that in spite of common grace, there is an antithesis between the regenerate and unregenerate that is grounded in the absolute antithesis between the two sets of principles to which Christians and non-Christians are fundamentally committed. The cause of this antithesis is the new birth, or regeneration, effected by God’s particular grace through the work of the Holy Spirit in the Christian. “This ‘regeneration’ breaks humanity in two, and repeals the unity of the human consciousness.” The result is “an abyss in the universal human consciousness across which no bridge can be built” (152).

In his Lectures on Calvinism Kuyper divides people into two groups, the normalists and the abnormalists. The former group thinks that the world is proceeding normally; the latter, that it is not. The latter recognizes regeneration as the only hope for humanity’s return to normalcy; the former discounts the idea of regeneration because it sees no need for it.38 Kuyper uses the Greek word palingenesis as a technical term to refer to regeneration and its effects. What both Christians and non-Christians have typically failed to understand, he maintains, is that all belief and knowledge, even in matters of science, and even for people who consider themselves nonreligious, are at root religious and depend on faith. The conflict is thus not between those who have faith and those who do not, but between those whose faith is rooted in palingenesis and is placed in the God of Scripture and those whose faith is rooted in their own fallen nature and is placed in something else.

Kuyper defines faith as “that function of the soul (psuchē) by which it obtains certainty directly and immediately, without the aid of discursive demonstration” (Principles,129). It follows from this definition that faith is not based on observation or reasoning. “Faith can never be anything else but an immediate act of consciousness, by which certainty is established in that consciousness on any point outside observation or demonstration” (131). When people speak of the “ground” of one’s faith, they are referring not to faith but to its content, “and this does not concern us now” (131). As the act of consciousness possessing certainty, faith “not only needs no demonstration, but allows none” (131-132). In all reasoning, Kuyper observes, one must “have a point of departure.” Such “fixed principles introductory to demonstration” are known as axioms. Admitting the existence of axioms is a tacit admission that some things must be taken on faith. “To you they are sure, they are lifted above every question of doubt, they offer you certainty in the fullest sense, not because you can prove them, but because you unconditionally believe them” (136).

Kuyper accepted Calvin’s view that the unregenerate have an innate knowledge of God that has been distorted by the destructive effects of sin on the intellect. Warning that “it will not do to omit the fact of sin from your theory of knowledge,” he asserts that “it is plain that every scientific reproduction of the knowledge of God must fail, so long as this sense remains weakened and this impulse falsified in its direction” (113). Here again, Kuyper attempts to maintain two ideas in balance. On the one hand, following Calvin, and in agreement with such Calvinists as Hodge, he insists that there is a natural knowledge of God—a “natural theology”—reflected in non-Christian religion, however debased. “The purest confession of truth finds ultimately its starting-point in the seed of religion (semen religionis), which, thanks to common grace, is still present in the fallen sinner; and, on the other hand, there is no form of idolatry so low, or so corrupted, but has sprung from this same semen religionis. Without natural Theology there is no Abba, Father, conceivable, any more than a Molech ritual” (301).

On the other hand, Kuyper insists that this natural theology does the non-Christian no good; indeed, its development in non-Christian religion is completely unhelpful as a support for the Christian faith. “The Christian Religion and Paganism do not stand related to each other as the higher and lower forms of development of the same thing; but the Christian religion is the highest form of development natural theology was capable of along the positive line; while all paganism is a development of that selfsame natural theology in the negative direction” (302).

Lest we misunderstand Kuyper here, he does not mean that Christianity develops natural theology by rationally thinking out its implications. What he means is that in Christianity natural theology has been supernaturally developed by the miracle of special revelation. This special, saving revelation of God, necessitated by sin, can itself be received only through the miracle of palingenesis. “There is no man that seeks, and seeking finds the Scriptures, and with its help turns himself to God. But rather from beginning to end it is one ceaselessly continued action which goes out from God to man, and operates upon him, even as the light of the sun operates upon the grain of corn that lies hidden in the ground, and draws it to the surface, and causes it to grow into a stalk” (365).

Kuyper uses the case of us accepting someone’s self-identification to illustrate the necessity of receiving God’s revelation by faith in order to gain knowledge of God. After all, “no one is able to disclose the inner life of a man except that man himself. . . . Not observation, but revelation, is the means by which knowledge of the human person must come to you” (142). Analogously, Kuyper argues that we cannot know God apart from revelation, and that all attempts to produce religiously significant knowledge of God from our moral consciousness or from nature must fail.

Against all such efforts the words of the Psalmist are ever in force: “In Thy light shall we see light,” and also the words of Christ: “Neither doth any know the Father save the Son, and he to whomever the Son willeth to reveal him.” Presently your demonstration may have a place in your theological studies of the knowledge that is revealed, and in your inferences derived from it for the subject and the cosmos; but observation or demonstration can never produce one single milligramme of religious gold. The entire gold-mine of religion lies in the self-revelation of this central power to the subject, and the subject has no other means than faith by which to appropriate to itself the gold from this mine. He who has no certainty in himself on the ground of this faith, about some point or other in religion, can never be made certain by demonstration or argument. In this way you may produce outward religiousness, but never religion of the heart. (149)

There is some ambiguity here and elsewhere in Kuyper’s thought concerning the possibility of rational arguments for the truths of faith. Here he seems to admit that such arguments might produce some recognition of the truth, but warns that such recognition will fall short of certainty and will not produce genuine faith from the heart. Such an admission is all the classical and evidentialist apologists typically claim for their arguments; the arguments are not thought to produce faith in any of the approaches to apologetics, but in the classical and evidentialist traditions they are thought to prepare the mind for faith. In general, Kuyper questions this view of apologetics, going so far as to conclude that apologetics has made matters worse. In the struggle between modernism and Christianity, he says, “Apologetics has advanced us not one single step. Apologists have invariably begun by abandoning the assailed breastwork, in order to entrench themselves cowardly in a ravelin behind it.”39 Elsewhere he admits that apologetics may have some value in removing difficulties or silencing critics, but he insists that it is useless to assist in bringing people to faith. Christian faith can be produced only by the internal witness of the Holy Spirit:

This is the reason why the arguments for the truth of the Scripture never avail anything. A person endowed with faith gradually will accept Scripture; if not so endowed he will never accept it, though he should be flooded with apologetics. Surely it is our duty to assist seeking souls, to explain or remove difficulties, sometimes even to silence a mocker; but to make an unbeliever have faith in Scripture is utterly beyond man’s power.40

Kuyper specifically takes issue with Hodge’s teaching that theology should authenticate the character of Scripture as revelation. “He declares that the theologian must authenticate these truths. But then, of course, they are no truths, and only become such, when I authenticate them” (Principles, 318).Kuyper argues that the necessity of God’s illumination of those who come to faith excludes any possibility of apologetic argument leading people to the Bible and from the Bible to God:

At no single point of the way is there place, therefore, for a support derived from demonstration or reasoning. . . . What God Himself does not bear witness to in your soul personally (not mystically-absolutely, but through the Scriptures) can never be known and confessed by you as Divine. Finite reasoning can never obtain the infinite as its result. If God then withdraws Himself, if in the soul of men He bears no more witness to the truth of His Word, men can no longer believe, and no apologetics, however brilliant, will ever be able to restore the blessing of faith in the Scripture. Faith, quickened by God Himself, is invincible; pseudo-faith, which rests merely upon reasoning, is devoid of all spiritual reality, so that it bursts like a soap-bubble as soon as the thread of your reasoning breaks. (365, 366)

One of the chief defects of apologetics, according to Kuyper, is that the knowledge it produces is based on probabilities, not certainties. This is a problem because for Kuyper, as for Calvinists generally, certainty is of the essence of faith. Indeed, as we have seen, for Kuyper faith is an incorrigible human capacity for certainty that still operates, though in a sinful direction, in the unregenerate. Apologetics, by seeking to produce knowledge not grasped by faith, actually undermines faith. “Faith gives highest assurance, where in our own consciousness it rests immediately on the testimony of God; but without this support, everything that announces itself as faith is merely a weaker form of opinion based on probability, which capitulates the moment a surer knowledge supersedes your defective evidence” (367-368).

Kuyper specifically takes issue with Hodge’s belief that the special revelation of God in Scripture can and should be tested or validated using reason or natural revelation. Such a position fails to take into account the noetic effects of sin: “If special revelation assumes that in consequence of sin the normal activity of the natural principium [that is, human reason] is disturbed, this implies of itself that the natural principium has lost its competency to judge” (381). Kuyper suggests that asking man to judge the validity of special revelation using natural knowledge is akin to asking a psychiatric patient to judge the validity of the psychiatrist’s method of treatment (381). Likewise, it is impossible to convince a person of the truth of the Christian position if he thinks his natural ability to determine truth is unimpaired. “Being as he is, he can do nothing else than dispute your special revelation every right of existence; to move him to a different judgment you should not reason with him, but change him in his consciousness; and since this is the fruit of regeneration, it does not lie with you, but with God” (383).

It follows, then, that apologetics as traditionally conceived must be abandoned. Negatively, Christians should seek to expose the anti-Christian religious root of all non-Christian thought. Positively, they should attempt to articulate and model the truth of Christianity to the world by living and working in every sphere of life according to biblical principles. As Kuyper puts it, “Principle must again bear witness against principle, world-view against world-view, spirit against spirit.”41 In order that “principle must be arrayed against principle,” Kuyper insists, we must do more than merely offer objections to non-Christian systems of thought and arguments in defense of theism or a generic form of Christianity. Instead, against the comprehensive life system of modernism, “we have to take our stand in a life-system of equally comprehensive and far-reaching power.”42 Kuyper finds this comprehensive Christian life system in Calvinism.43

Herman Dooyeweerd

Kuyper stimulated tremendous interest among Dutch Calvinist thinkers to work out a Christian philosophy that was faithful to Reformed theological principles.44 His seminal ideas were developed into a full-fledged philosophy by others, notably Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977).45 Dooyeweerd (pronounced DOE-yuh-vair) was Professor of Philosophy of Law at the Amsterdam Free University, an institution Kuyper founded, and also head of the Kuyper Institute in The Hague. He worked out his philosophy with the help of his brother-in-law, D. H. Theodor Vollenhoven, also a professor of philosophy at the Amsterdam Free University (specializing in the philosophy of history).

Dooyeweerd’s magnum opus was a four-volume work originally published in 1935-1936 as De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee (“The Philosophy of the Law-Idea”). The title reflects his central contention that philosophical thought has an underlying religious root that is related to a transcendent origin and destiny of reality that he called the law-idea. This religious root gives unity to the cosmos in its various aspects or “law-spheres” (such as the biotic, the intellectual, and so forth). Because this law-idea relates to the unity of the cosmos, another name by which Dooyeweerd’s philosophy is known is the cosmonomic (from cosmos, “world,” and nomos, “law”) philosophy.

De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee was published in a second edition in English in 1953-1957 with the title A New Critique of Theoretical Thought.46 The English title is also fitting, because the goal of the book is to develop what Dooyeweerd called a transcendental criticism of theoretical thought, an idea that comes from Immanuel Kant, the Enlightenment philosopher whose most important work was entitled Critique of Pure Reason.47 Putting the matter as simply as possible, in a transcendental critique one seeks to show what are the necessary preconditions or presuppositions of all knowledge. In his Critique Kant argued that both dogmatism (the unjustified assumption that human reason is competent to know everything) and skepticism (the hypercritical denial that human reason is competent to know anything) should be rejected. In their place Kant favored the method of criticism—seeking to discern both the competency and the limitations of human reason.48

Dooyeweerd’s New Critique may be read largely as a critique and refutation of Kant’s philosophy. He explains, “it can be said that our transcendental critique of theoretical thought has an inner connection with Kant’s critique of pure reason, notwithstanding the fact that our critique was turned to a great extent against the theoretical dogmatism in Kant’s epistemology” (1:118). According to Dooyeweerd, Kant recognized the need to avoid dogmatism but actually fell into it by assuming the autonomy of theoretical thought (1:35). That is, Kant assumed “that he could lay bare a starting-point in theoretical reason itself, which would rest at the basis of every possible theoretical synthesis” (1:49). To put it simply, Kant sought to use reason alone to critique reason. Dooyeweerd believes such a project impossible, even for well-meaning Christians—among whom he counts himself. “The great turning point in my thought was marked by the discovery of the religious root of thought itself, whereby a new light was shed on the failure of all attempts, including my own, to bring about an inner synthesis between the Christian faith and a philosophy which is rooted in faith in the self-sufficiency of human reason” (1:v). Note the Kuyperian themes of the religious root of all thought and the unavoidability of faith in all human thinking.

Kant’s assumption that reason was competent to critique reason was based on the assumption that he could develop a theory of knowledge free of religious presuppositions. Kant’s theory of knowledge presupposed a view of nature and freedom that was a “very religious basic motive” (1:89). By “religious basic motive,” or ground motive as he also calls it, Dooyeweerd means “the central spiritual motive power of our thinking and acting,”49 the most fundamental way of thinking about reality that moves people to think and act a certain way. A ground motive “gives content to the central mainspring of the entire attitude of life and thought” of a religious community (1:61). In other words, it is a basic root way of thinking from which various worldviews and systems of thought spring.

Dooyeweerd identifies four basic ground motives in Western thought. The Greek worldview, given concrete formulation by Aristotle, was rooted in a dualism of form and matter in which form represented the rationality of mind while matter represented the irrationality of brute fact. The biblical worldview was not dualistic, but was rooted in the motive of creation, fall, and redemption. The medieval worldview, associated especially by Dooyeweerd with Thomas Aquinas, utilized a half-Greek, half-biblical worldview based on a dualism of nature and grace. According to Dooyeweerd, traditional Christian apologetics has been dominated for centuries by this unbiblical nature-grace dualism. Finally, the modern, humanistic worldview (which Dooyeweerd relates especially to Kant) is characterized by a dualism of nature and freedom (1:61-63).50

All three nonbiblical worldviews, argues Dooyeweerd, despite their efforts to secure an autonomous rationality, lead to irrationality by absolutizing one aspect of creation and therefore rendering creation void of meaning. This inevitably results in a dualism in which one side is viewed as rational (form or nature) and the other side as irrational (matter, grace, or freedom). This internal incoherence is due to the fact that non-Christian thought invariably proceeds from one or another kind of immanentism, the hopeless belief that one can know ultimate reality using a standard found within one’s immanent experience (rather like a goldfish trying to know the fishbowl from within it). Likewise, immanence philosophy refers to “all philosophy that seeks its Archimedean point in philosophic thought itself” (1:14). Exposing this immanentism is the task of a “transcendental” critique.

Only the Christian faith, Dooyeweerd argues, provides a true standpoint of transcendence from which created reality can be viewed. This standpoint involves an arche (the Greek word for beginning) and an Archimedean point (a metaphor drawn from the story of Archimedes, who claimed that from a point far enough above the earth and with the proper lever, he could move the earth). An arche is “an origin which creates meaning,” the transcendent origin of all meaning in the cosmos (1:9). An Archimedean point is a conceptual point from which a comprehensive philosophical view of the cosmos in all its aspects of meaning may be coherently held (1:11). The arche of the biblical ground motive is God as the Creator, the Origin of all created reality in all its aspects. The Archimedean point is Jesus Christ as the root of the new, redeemed humanity in whom regeneration (what Kuyper called palingenesis) has taken place.

The task of Christian philosophy, then, according to Dooyeweerd, is twofold. First, the Christian thinker is to expose the inadequacy of non-Christian worldviews by showing that they collapse into an untenable dualism with both rationalistic and irrationalistic tendencies. Second, the Christian is to commend the Christian worldview as the only one able to provide a secure footing for knowledge and ethics. In doing so, the Christian will confront non-Christians with their need to receive God’s grace of redemption in Jesus Christ, through whom they will be regenerated and in whom they will find the ultimate reference point of meaning in life.

Cornelius Van Til

Arguably the most controversial apologist of the twentieth century was Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987), a Dutch-American Calvinist whose system of thought is often called presuppositionalism.51 Van Til lived the first ten years of his life in Holland while Abraham Kuyper was at his height both as a Christian theologian and as a statesman. His family moved to Indiana and he later attended Calvin College and then Calvin Theological Seminary for a year. Both institutions were located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church, a Calvinist denomination populated primarily by Dutch immigrants. Van Til then transferred to Princeton Theological Seminary, the Calvinist institution where Hodge and Warfield had taught. He earned a master’s degree from the seminary in 1925 and a doctorate in 1927 from Princeton University, where he studied under the idealist philosopher A. A. Bowman. In 1929 J. Gresham Machen founded Westminster Theological Seminary as a conservative alternative to Princeton Theological Seminary, which had been taken over by liberalism, and the next year brought Van Til to Westminster as its first professor of apologetics.52 Van Til served in that capacity until his retirement in 1972, when he was named professor emeritus.53

Van Til has had an impact on Christian apologetics both inside and outside of strictly Calvinist theological circles. His many loyal followers have labored to promote his approach to apologetics, among whom we may especially mention Greg L. Bahnsen and John M. Frame as two of Van Til’s star pupils who have proved able interpreters of their teacher. In addition to numerous scholarly publications on other matters, Bahnsen wrote many articles and books expounding and defending Van Til’s apologetic, culminating in two important books published posthumously.54Frame taught apologetics for many years at Westminster Theological Seminary in California, a sister institution to the Philadelphia school, and has also written some of the best books on Van Til.55 He is also one of the very few self-confessed “Van Tilians” to express significant disagreements and criticisms of Van Til’s teaching on apologetics.

Van Til’s students have also included some of the most influential apologists of a more broadly evangelical perspective, most notably Edward John Carnell, professor of apologetics at Fuller Theological Seminary, and Francis Schaeffer, one of the most popular evangelical teachers and writers of the twentieth century. Van Til did not, however, regard either of these students of his as sound proponents of a Reformed apologetic, and wrote extensive critiques of their apologetic thought.56 Van Til has also stimulated enormous debate over apologetic method; most of the leading American evangelical apologists of the last forty years have interacted with his approach in their writings.57

Van Til has typically been characterized as abandoning the apologetic approach of Old Princeton for a Kuyperian approach. This is not so much incorrect as it is incomplete, as he essentially formed a creative synthesis of the two.58 He made this especially clear in his book Common Grace and the Gospel. “So far as choice had to be made between the two positions, I took my position with Kuyper rather than with Hodge and Warfield. But there were two considerations that compelled me finally to seek a combination of some of the elements of each position.”59 These two considerations were that Old Princeton recognized the antithesis in its theology, if not fully in its apologetics, and that Old Princeton was right in insisting that “Christianity is capable of rational defense” (184).

Van Til, therefore, did not abandon Old Princeton’s epistemology or apologetic concern. “But never have I expressed a basic difference with its theology or its basic epistemology” (155). He agreed with the Common-Sense Realist view taught at Old Princeton that the validity of sense perception, logic, moral values, and the like was guaranteed to us by God’s creation of us and of the world. He also agreed with Old Princeton that apologetics should offer proof for the Christian position. But he integrated this position with the Kuyperian doctrine of the antithesis. Common-Sense Realism had held that non-Christians live in a God-created universe and thus operate on the basis of Christian presuppositions, whether they acknowledge it or not. For the Old Princetonians this meant that Christians might appeal to these shared presuppositions in traditional apologetic arguments. In Van Til’s thinking, however, the Kuyperian doctrine of the antithesis indicated that the non-Christian so suppresses these presuppositions when thinking about matters of principle that no argument based on them will connect.

For Van Til traditional apologetics suffered from being founded on a faulty theological basis—either Roman Catholic, Arminian, or inconsistently Calvinistic. The last fault belonged to the apologetical tradition that had been the rule at Old Princeton. In Van Til’s view, the great mistake of this tradition was in using rationalistic arguments that concluded that the truths of Christianity are probably true. Van Til thought probabilistic arguments detracted from the certainty of faith and the absolute authority of Scripture as the written word of God. Arguing that a Reformed or Calvinistic theology required an equally distinctive Reformed apologetic, Van Til called on the church to rethink its classical apologetical tradition and develop a radically biblical apologetic.

This apologetic would not attempt to prove or substantiate Christianity by a simple appeal to factual evidence, as though non-Christians were honest enough to examine the evidence fairly. Instead it would argue by presupposition. The first step in this approach is to show that non-Christian systems of thought are incapable of accounting for rationality and morality. Here the apologist is to show that ultimately all non-Christian systems of thought fall into irrationalism. The second step is to commend the Christian view as giving the only possible presuppositional foundation for thought and life.

Christian apologetics, then, is to argue by presupposition, as Van Til maintained in his major textbook on apologetics, The Defense of the Faith. “To argue by presupposition is to indicate what are the epistemological and metaphysical principles that underlie and control one’s method.”60 For Van Til this is the only legitimate apologetic approach. There is no room in his approach for deductive arguments from premises granted by non-Christians to Christian conclusions. Nor is there any room for inductive arguments from facts granted by non-Christians and used as evidences to support Christian conclusions. The only legitimate type of apologetic argument is one that reasons indirectly and presuppositionally that unless Christianity is true, nothing can be known or predicated.

“There is, accordingly, but one thing that Christians can do,” namely, challenge unbelieving assumptions.61 The point of contact with non-Christian systems “must be in the nature of a head-on collision” (98-99). Van Til concludes The Defense of the Faith with a summary of his position, including the following statement:

That the argument for Christianity must therefore be that of presupposition. . . . The best, the only, the absolutely certain proof of the truth of Christianity is that unless its truth be presupposed there is no proof of anything. Christianity is proved as being the very foundation of the idea of proof itself (298).62

For Van Til there was only one apologetic method—arguing by presupposition.

Gordon H. Clark

Of the four twentieth-century Reformed apologists we are profiling in this chapter, the one whose thought seems least indebted to Abraham Kuyper is Gordon Haddon Clark (1902-1985).63 Clark received a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1929, where he taught philosophy until 1936. He then taught philosophy at Wheaton College, an evangelical liberal arts college near Chicago (1936-1943). During this period, most of his published works were professional philosophy textbooks and articles published by secular academic presses.64

Finding that he was too Calvinist for the broadly evangelical Wheaton, Clark resigned his position there and in 1945 was ordained as a teaching elder in the Philadelphia Presbytery of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC), a denomination he had helped J. Gresham Machen get started a decade earlier. Ironically, Clark was regarded as not Calvinist enough by Van Til, who led an effort to have his ordination revoked. Although the presbytery decided in Clark’s favor, the controversy led to his departure from the OPC and completely soured relations between Clark’s supporters and Van Til’s, a situation that generally persists to this day.65

From 1945 to 1973 Clark served as chairman of the philosophy department at Butler University in Indianapolis. During this long period of his life he authored his most influential works of Christian philosophy and apologetics. After his retirement at Butler, he took a position at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia (1974-1983).

Gordon Clark is one of the most influential advocates of a presuppositional approach to apologetics. Two of the many theologians and apologists greatly influenced by him are Carl F. H. Henry and Ronald H. Nash. Henry (b. 1913), a student of Clark at Wheaton, was one of the major leaders of evangelicalism in the second half of the twentieth century.66 He helped establish Fuller Theological Seminary, was the first editor of Christianity Today, was a founding member of the Evangelical Theological Society and of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, and lectured around the world for World Vision International and Prison Fellowship. At the beginning of his magnum opus, the six-volume God, Revelation, and Authority, Henry enthusiastically made explicit his dependence on Clark’s apologetic teaching.67 Nash is an evangelical philosopher also greatly influenced by Clark, though he has also expressed some disagreements with Clark’s position. Nash edited a volume of essays in honor of Clark68 and has authored a number of important works in Christian apologetics and philosophy.69

Whereas Van Til’s apologetic system may be described as a transcendental presuppositionalism, Clark’s is best characterized as deductive presuppositionalism. The difference is subtle but important. According to Van Til, the apologist should argue that logic, truth, meaning, and value can be what they are only on the presupposition that the God of Scripture is real. Truth is found everywhere in God’s world, but this truth can be known only because we are created in God’s image and have been given the capacity to know God’s truth. The transcendent God of Scripture provides a transcendental point of reference; it is from God that all truth comes and it is in the light of God that all truth is known.

By contrast, Clark maintained that all that could truly be known was to be found in Scripture itself. In his view, knowledge of truth requires deductive proof, and nothing can be deduced from the uncertain facts of the natural world or of the human mind. Furthermore, inductive reasoning is unreliable, because “all inductive arguments are formal fallacies” when judged by the canons of deductive reasoning, and so cannot be used to arrive at truth.70 The only source of indisputable premises with which logic can work is the Bible. So, Clark argued, the infallible statements of Scripture provide the only source of certain knowledge, and only what the Bible actually says, or what can be logically deduced from those biblical statements, constitutes real knowledge.

The truth of the Bible as God’s word is what Clark in his later works called his “axiom.”71 The idea of an axiom is most easily illustrated from geometry, where theorems, such as the Pythagorean theorem, are deduced logically from elemental facts of geometry called axioms. “But the axioms are never deduced. They are assumed without proof.” Such starting points that are not demonstrable and not questionable are unavoidable, for without them one could never begin a process of proving anything.72 According to Clark, “Every system of theology or philosophy must have a starting point.”73

The inference is this: No one can consistently object to Christianity’s being based on an indemonstrable axiom. If the secularists exercise their privilege of basing their theorems on axioms, then so may Christians. If the former refuse to accept our axioms, then they can have no logical objection to our rejecting theirs. . . . Our axiom shall be that God has spoken. More completely, God has spoken in the Bible. More precisely, what the Bible says, God has spoken.74

Although the axiom of biblical revelation must be “accepted without proofs or reasons,” its truth is shown by “its success in producing a system.”75 According to Clark, systems of thought that do not rest on the biblical axiom are inevitably inconsistent and incoherent. His apologetic therefore consists of two steps: showing that non-Christian philosophies are hopelessly inconsistent and incapable of accounting for morality and meaning, and showing that Christianity is internally consistent. At the end of his most celebrated book, A Christian View of Men and Things, Clark sums up his thesis: “that Christian theism is self-consistent and that several other philosophies are inconsistent, skeptical, and therefore erroneous.” In contrast to such philosophies as Marxism and humanism that Clark believes render history and morality meaningless, “it has been argued that Christianity is self-consistent, that it gives meaning to life and morality, and that it supports the existence of truth and the possibility of knowledge.”76 Likewise, at the end of his textbook on the history of philosophy, Clark suggests that “a choice must be made between skeptical futility and a word from God.”77

Clark maintains, then, that nonbiblical systems of thought cannot provide an internally consistent worldview within which knowledge and morality have meaning. Of course, advocates of other systems of thought will deny this claim. In particular, advocates of religions that have their own dogmatic principle other than biblical revelation (for example, the Qur’an in the case of Islam) might object that their claimed revelation could just as well become one’s axiomatic starting point. To all such counterarguments Clark simply responds: “Since all possible knowledge must be contained within the system and deduced from its first principles, the dogmatic answer must be found in the Bible itself. The answer is that faith is the gift of God. . . . The initiation of spiritual life, called regeneration, is the immediate work of the Holy Spirit. It is not produced by Abrahamic blood, nor by natural desire, nor by any act of human will.”78

Ultimately, then, for Clark as well as for Kuyper, Dooyeweerd, and Van Til, we know that the God of the Bible is the true God because he has sovereignly chosen to illuminate our minds by the regenerating work of the Spirit.79

Because Van Til and Clark are so often compared, and because both are commonly called presuppositionalists, it will be helpful to review the differing versions of Reformed apologetics articulated by these two thinkers.

Scripture provides only rational source of knowledge; science and history are not valid sources of truth

Logic must be defined and understood on the basis of God’s revelation in Scripture

Logic is the method by which we derive truth from God’s revelation in Scripture

External consistency with Scripture as the test of truth

Internal consistency of Scripture as the test of its truth

Believers and unbelievers do not share a common reason

Believers and unbelievers share reason in common

Alvin Plantinga

The one Reformed apologist profiled in this chapter who was still living at the beginning of the twenty-first century is Alvin Plantinga (b. 1932), chairman of the philosophy department at the University of Notre Dame and the director of its Center for Philosophy of Religion. He has served as president of both the Society of Christian Philosophers (which he helped found) and the American Philosophical Association. With Plantinga we have the advantage of two autobiographical pieces in which he tells us about his intellectual and spiritual pilgrimage and introduces his published work.80 Our inclusion of Plantinga in this survey of Reformed apologists is controversial because of the significant differences between his views and those of the other apologists profiled here. However, the similarities are significant enough to support identifying his position as a variant form of Reformed apologetics.

Plantinga, the son of a philosopher, Cornelius Plantinga (Sr.), grew up in a Dutch-American home that was staunchly conservative and Calvinist. After a year at Calvin College, he won a scholarship to Harvard University, where he seems to have passed through his major crisis of faith. It disturbed him that so many of his professors and fellow students—including people that seemed smarter than him—did not believe in God. The crisis was resolved on a gloomy winter evening while he was out walking on the campus:

But suddenly it was as if the heavens opened; I heard, so it seemed, music of overwhelming power and grandeur and sweetness; there was light of unimaginable splendor and beauty; it seemed I could see into heaven itself; and I suddenly saw or perhaps felt with great clarity and persuasion and conviction that the Lord was really there and was all I had thought. The effects of this experience lingered for a long time; I was still caught up in arguments about the existence of God, but they often seemed to me merely academic, of little existential concern, as if one were to argue about whether there really had been a past, for example, or whether there really were other people, as opposed to cleverly constructed robots.81

During a recess at Harvard, Plantinga visited his family and attended some classes from W. Henry Jellema, the professor from whom his father had learned philosophy in the late twenties and early thirties. Alvin was so taken by Jellema’s teaching that he transferred back to Calvin to study under him (from 1951 to 1954). In Jellema’s teaching on the history of philosophy, he argued that the rejection of Christianity and theism in modern philosophy did not result from intellectual objections but rather from a religious commitment antithetical to Christianity. “Jellema’s way of thinking about these matters (as he said) goes back to Abraham Kuyper and other Dutch Calvinists” (54). Plantinga accepted this Kuyperian notion of the antithesis while carefully observing the qualification (which goes back to Kuyper himself) that this antithesis does not prevent non-Christians from getting some things right:

Those who don’t share our commitment to the Lord are in transition, just as we are. As Calvin says, there is unbelief within the breast of every Christian; but isn’t there also belief within the breast of every non-Christian? The antithesis is of course real; but at any time in history it is also less than fully articulated and developed.82

Plantinga is not uncritical about the teaching he received at Calvin College. He confesses that at Calvin there

was a sort of tendency to denigrate or devalue other forms of Christianity, other emphases within serious Christianity. . . . We Calvinists, we thought, were much more rigorous about the life of the mind than were fundamentalists, and as a result we were inclined to look down our Reformed noses at them. . . . Since the Enlightenment, we Christians have had real enemies to fight and real battles to win; why then do we expend so much time and energy despising or fighting each other? (57-58)

Plantinga did his graduate work in philosophy at the University of Michigan, where he took courses from William P. Alston and other noted philosophers. At Michigan the question he considered the most important in philosophy—“what is the truth about this matter?—was often greeted with disdain as unduly naïve.”83

In the 1960s he taught philosophy at Calvin College with another of Jellema’s students, Nicholas Wolterstorff. Through the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, the two developed close associations with other philosophers sympathetic to a Reformed approach to philosophy, including George Mavrodes, William Alston, and David Holwerda.

The New Reformed Epistemology

In 1982 Plantinga accepted a position at the University of Notre Dame, which, although Roman Catholic, had a very high concentration of evangelical graduate students in philosophy. The following year the university press released a book co-edited by Plantinga and Wolterstorff entitled Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God.84 The book contained articles by the editors and several other philosophers—Mavrodes, Holwerda, Alston, and George Marsden—from a yearlong project at the Calvin Center on the subject “Toward a Reformed View of Faith and Reason.” Faith and Rationality had an immediate and profound impact, not only on Christian apologetics, but also in the halls of academia. Plantinga’s lengthy contribution “Reason and Belief in God,” in particular, changed the direction of philosophy of religion in universities and colleges around the world. Books and articles appear every year discussing the merits of Plantinga’s “Reformed Epistemology,” as it has come to be known.

Plantinga’s interest in philosophy has been and is largely apologetical. He suggests that “perhaps the main function of apologetics is to show that from a philosophical point of view, Christians and other theists have nothing whatever for which to apologize” (33). Three apologetical issues have concerned him: “the existence of certain kinds of evil, the fact that many people for whom I have deep respect do not accept belief in God, and the fact that it is difficult to find much by way of noncircular argument or evidence for the existence of God” (34). The second and third issues do not now greatly disturb him, “But the first remains deeply baffling” (34). His answer to the problem of evil is, like Thomas Reid’s, an appeal to human free will (41-47). In this respect he differs from the other major Reformed apologists profiled in this chapter.

The first book Plantinga authored (he had already edited a couple books) was God and Other Minds (in 1967). The main argument of this work, as he explains in “Self-Profile,” is “that belief in God and belief in other minds are in the same epistemological boat; since belief in other minds is clearly rational, the same goes for belief in God” (55).

Years later, Plantinga’s assessment of his efforts in God and Other Minds was that it looked “like a promising attempt by someone a little long on chutzpah but a little short on epistemology.”85

In 1974 Plantinga wrote “Is It Rational to Believe in God?,” a precursor to his longer paper in Faith and Rationality. “There I argued that belief in God can be perfectly rational even if none of the theistic arguments work and even if there is no non-circular evidence for it; my main aim was to argue that it is perfectly rational to take belief in God as basic—that is, to accept theistic belief without accepting it on the basis of argument or evidence from other propositions one believes” (55-56). This idea of belief in God as “basic” is the core of Plantinga’s new Reformed Epistemology.

Plantinga then turned to a question he found puzzling, namely, that Reformed Christians tended to view natural theology—“the attempt to prove or demonstrate the existence of God”—with suspicion, if not hostility. What is the reason for this (60)? Plantinga concluded that the Reformed thinkers were implicitly reacting against the underlying assumption of much natural theology, namely, the assumption of classical and modern foundationalism that the existence of God could not be among those beliefs that were properly basic (61). Moreover, Reformed thinkers were rejecting the claim that belief in God on the basis of evidence or proof was somehow superior to belief in God without such evidence or proof (that is, as basic). To explain why, Plantinga asks us to consider three analogies. The person who accepts 2 + 3 = 5 because a computer that yields that equation has proved itself reliable in most instances he has been able to check, is not in a better position epistemically than the person who accepts as self-evident 2 + 3 = 5 as basic. Nor is the person who, while walking around the Tower and observing pigeons flying around it, believes there are pigeons there only because it says so in the guidebook. The person depending on the computer for his acceptance of arithmetic and the person depending on the guidebook for his knowledge of the pigeons are both exhibiting what Plantinga labels a perverse approach to knowledge.

The same thing may be said for the person who believes in the existence of her husband on the basis of the sort of evidence cited by an analogical argument for other minds. Belief in God on the basis of the sort of evidence furnished by the traditional theistic arguments (even supposing the arguments successful) is, according to the Reformed epistemologist, rather like these cases. It is not epistemically superior to taking belief in God as basic. The shoe, indeed, is on the other foot: the better of these two ways of accepting theistic belief is the latter. (62)

Plantinga puts the idea of belief in God as basic in a broader perspective by rehearsing Thomas Reid’s argument against modern skepticism concerning sense perception. “Reid argues—correctly, I believe—that the deliverances of sense perception don’t need justification or certification in terms of other sources of belief as introspection and self-evidence. . . . What Reid said about sense perception, Reformed thinkers have said about belief in God” (63).

Plantinga does not think the Reformed objection to natural theology renders apologetics suspect. In another article, in which he argues that apologetics should play a role in the Reformed tradition, he admits that some Reformed theologians have thought otherwise: “But isn’t the very idea of apologetics, whether negative or positive, contrary to the basic Reformed insight of Kuyper and Dooyeweerd? If all thought has religious roots, then the thing to say about attacks on Christianity is just that they too have religious roots—non-Christian religious roots; thus they do not require an answer. Faith cannot reason with unbelief: it can only preach to it.”86

Plantinga’s answer is that apologetics is useful after all because people’s condition and direction in life are complex and changing. Thus the Christian, according to Calvin himself, experiences doubt as well as the certainty of faith.87 Negative apologetics can help Christians, then, by refuting the arguments that stir up doubts. Apologetics, both negative and positive, can also help non-Christians who are on their way to becoming Christians.88

Warranted Christian Belief

Plantinga’s magnum opus is a three-volume series of books that develops his mature thinking regarding Christian epistemology. The first two books, Warrant: The Current Debate and Warrant and Proper Function, both published in 1993, surveyed the field of epistemology and proposed a theory of warrant. The third volume, Warranted Christian Belief (2000), refined Plantinga’s theory and applied it to the defense of the reasonableness of Christian belief.89 This landmark book deserves careful study by everyone interested in apologetic theory; here we will briefly summarize the argument of the book.90

Plantinga begins by saying that the question he will be addressing is whether Christian belief is “intellectually acceptable” for thinking people today (viii). Modern Western thought has posed two kinds of objections to Christian belief. First, de facto objections challenge “the truth of Christian belief” (viii); these include the problem of evil and the alleged incoherence of specific Christian doctrines such as the Trinity or the Incarnation (viii-ix). Second, de jure objections claim not that Christian belief is (necessarily) false but that it is somehow “not up to snuff from an intellectual point of view” (ix). Plantinga will argue that de jure objections to the effect that Christian belief is unjustified or irrational are not viable. “As I see it, if there are any real de jure objections to Christian belief, they lie in the neighborhood of warrant” (xi). Warrant is what makes a particular belief not only true but also knowledge; it is what separates a “lucky guess” and other types of true beliefs that are not knowledge from true beliefs in which we really know something.

Plantinga distinguishes both de facto and de jure questions from the question of whether there can “really be such a thing as Christian belief” (3). This question asks not whether Christian belief is true (de facto) or warranted (de jure) but whether it is really a belief at all. Plantinga has in mind here the claim credited (at least) to Immanuel Kant (chapter 1, pp. 3-30) and made by a variety of modern philosophers and theologians—of whom he discusses Gordon Kaufman and John Hick as examples—that if God exists our concepts could not apply or refer to him. Kaufman argues that God, if he exists, transcends all finite reality and so cannot be identified with anything we actually experience; Kaufman ends up concluding that the term “God,” if it refers meaningfully to anything, is a symbol of the “cosmic forces” that make it possible for us to pursue human values. Hick argues that God—or, as he prefers, “the Real”—exists, and our religious language does refer in some way to the Real, but what it says about the Real is not “literally” true. Plantinga examines both of these positions and finds them self-defeating and unworthy of acceptance (chapter 2, pp. 31-63).

In the book Warrant: The Current Debate, Plantinga had argued that justification, coherence, rationality, and reliable faculties do not adequately distinguish knowledge from mere true belief. He retraces and augments this argument in chapters 3 and 4 of Warranted Christian Belief. In his earlier works God and Other Minds (1967) and “Reason and Belief in God” (1983), Plantinga says, he took it for granted “that this question of the rational justification of theistic belief is identical with, or intimately connected with, the question whether there are proofs, or at least good arguments, for or against the existence of God” (68).

In God and Other Minds, I argued first that the theistic proofs or arguments do not succeed. In evaluating these arguments, I employed a traditional but wholly improper standard: I took it that these arguments are successful only if they start from propositions that compel assent from every honest and intelligent person and proceed majestically to their conclusion by way of forms of argument that can be rejected only on pain of insincerity or irrationality. Naturally enough, I joined the contemporary chorus in holding that none of the traditional arguments was successful. (I failed to note that no philosophical arguments of any consequence meet that standard; hence the fact that theistic arguments do not is of less significance than I thought.) (69)

The problem with such reasoning, Plantinga explains, is that it presupposes that a belief such as belief in God requires rational justification according to the canon of evidentialism: “that belief in God, if it is to be rationally acceptable, must be such that there is good evidence for it” (70). Plantinga traces this evidentialist approach to religious belief especially to John Locke (71-82). “Evidentialism is the claim that religious belief is rationally acceptable only if there are good arguments for it; Locke is both a paradigm evidentialist and the proximate source of the entire evidentialist tradition, from him through Hume and Reid and Kant and the nineteenth century to the present” (82).

Evidentialism is part of a larger epistemological tradition called classical foundationalism. According to foundationalism, there are two categories of beliefs: those that we believe “on the evidential basis of others” (82), and those “basic” beliefs that we accept without basing our acceptance on other beliefs (83). These basic beliefs are the “foundations” of one’s entire belief system or “noetic structure.” Hence, according to foundationalism, “every proposition is either in the foundations or believed on the evidential basis of other propositions.” Plantinga considers this point “trivially true” and states, “This much of foundationalism should be uncontroversial and accepted by all” (83). However, the classical foundationalist goes further and specifies that only certain kinds of beliefs can be “properly basic”; these are usually specified to include propositions that are self-evident, incorrigible, or evident to one’s senses (84). (By “evident to the senses” in this context is meant merely that we are experiencing certain sensory impressions; for example, that I am experiencing seeing something white.) This classical foundationalism is accompanied by “deontologism,” the belief that humans have a duty or obligation to regulate their beliefs in accord with evidentialist strictures. The classic expression of this evidentialism is W. K. Clifford’s essay “The Ethics of Belief” in which he argued that “it is wrong, always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence” (89).91 Plantinga devotes the rest of chapter 3 of Warranted Christian Belief to explaining why this classical foundationalism does not work as a de jure objection to Christian belief. The claim that only what is self-evident, incorrigible, or evident to the senses is itself none of those things, and therefore the claim is self-defeating (94-97). Moreover, accepting classical foundationalism would require us not to believe many of the things we actually believe, such as our memories, the reality of the external objects that we perceive through our senses, and the like (97-99). Since classical foundationalism is not a cogent position, Plantinga sees no reason why a person who has thought about the objections to Christian belief and remains convinced that Christianity is true would not be justified in that belief (99-102).

In chapter 4, Plantinga explores the notion that Christian belief is intellectually unacceptable because it cannot be shown to be “rational” in some sense (108-34). He finds this claim wanting as well. Clearly, there are millions of “rational” human beings who do in fact accept Christian belief (109), and it is not plausible to claim that in all of these persons their rational faculties are malfunctioning (110-13). Nor will it work to fault Christian belief for not being among “the deliverances of reason”: many things that we believe do not fit in that category but are still perfectly acceptable beliefs (113-15).

In Warrant and Proper Function, Plantinga had argued that “proper function” constitutes warrant for our true beliefs. He fine-tunes this argument in chapter 5 of Warranted Christian Belief. The objections that such non-Christian thinkers as Freud and Marx (136-44) raise to Christian belief amount to saying “that there is something wrong with believing it” whether it happens to be true or not. “They are best construed, I think, as complaining that Christian belief is not produced by cognitive faculties functioning properly and aimed at the truth” (152). The de jure issue, then, is warrant, understood as proper function. “More fully, a belief has warrant just if it is produced by cognitive processes or faculties that are functioning properly, in an environment that is propitious for that exercise of cognitive powers, according to a design plan that is successfully aimed at the production of true belief” (xi).

Christian belief, on this definition of warrant, is warranted (assuming that it is true) because the cognitive process that produces Christian belief is the internal work of the Holy Spirit, restoring to proper function the sensus divinitatis or natural knowledge of God that all human beings have (xii; see chapters 6-10). Plantinga introduces this “model” of warranted Christian belief in chapter 6. He views the natural knowledge that God exists not as an inference from nature (which would constitute a kind of natural theology) but as “occasioned” by our observations of nature (175). “In this regard, the sensus divinitatis resembles perception, memory, and a priori belief” (175). Therefore, belief in God’s existence arising from the sensus divinitatis and occasioned by our experience of the natural world is properly “basic” rather than inferred (176-79). The reason why so many people do not believe in God is that this sensus divinitatis no longer functions properly as the result of sin. Thus, “it is really the unbeliever who displays epistemic malfunction” (184). Looked at in this way, a “basic” belief in God is probably warranted if God exists though unwarranted if he does not (186-90). It turns out, then, that the de jure objection that Christian belief is unwarranted really depends on the de facto claim that it is false (190-91). “If I am right in these claims, there aren’t any viable de jure criticisms that are compatible with the truth of Christian belief; that is, there aren’t any viable de jure objections independent of de facto objections” (xii).

Plantinga elaborates and defends this model in chapters 7 to 10. Early in chapter 7, Plantinga explains his purpose:

…I’ll argue that many or most Christians not only can be but are both justified and internally rational in holding their external beliefs. External rationality and warrant are harder. The only way I can see to argue that Christian belief has these virtues is to argue that Christian belief is, indeed, true. I don’t propose to offer such an argument. That is because I don’t know of an argument for Christian belief that seems very likely to convince one who doesn’t already accept its conclusion. That is nothing against Christian belief, however, and indeed I shall argue that if Christian beliefs are true, then the standard and most satisfactory way to hold them will not be as the conclusions of argument (200-201).

Plantinga then explores the concept of sin and its noetic effects, concluding with a rather technical discussion of the problems attending naturalism (227-39). Here Plantinga argues that naturalism is not only self-defeating (as he had argued in chapter 12 of Warrant and Proper Function) but also improbable.

To complete his account of Christian belief as warranted, Plantinga addresses the claim that Christian belief faces certain defeaters, warranted beliefs incompatible with Christian belief (chapter 11). Plantinga examines what he thinks are the three most important proposed defeaters for Christian belief—historical biblical criticism, postmodernist and pluralist objections to the exclusive truth claims of Christian belief, and the problem of suffering and evil (chapters 12-14)—and argues “that none of these succeed as a defeater for classical Christian belief” (xiii).

Plantinga’s project in this book, then, can be viewed as “an exercise in apologetics and philosophy of religion,” the purpose of which is to clear away the de jure objection “that Christian belief, whether true or not, is intellectually unacceptable” (xiii). His purpose is not to show that Christian belief is true but that, if it is true, then it is also warranted. In his closing paragraph, Plantinga makes it clear that he has not attempted to address the question of the truth of Christian belief:

But is it true? This is the really important question. And here we pass beyond the competency of philosophy, whose main competence, in this area, is to clear away certain objections, impedances, and obstacles to Christian belief. Speaking for myself and of course not in the name of philosophy, I can say only that it does, indeed, seem to me to be true, and to be the maximally important truth (499).

Conclusion

Alvin Plantinga is clearly a different sort of Reformed apologist than Herman Dooyeweerd, Gordon Clark, or Cornelius Van Til. He represents what might be termed the “left wing” of Reformed apologetics, advocating in many respects a more classical approach to the field. By classifying Plantinga as a Reformed apologist, we are by no means glossing over the significant differences between his thought and that of the presuppositionalists.92 Nevertheless, his indebtedness to the Kuyperian tradition and his advocacy of the idea that belief in God is properly basic position his apologetic in the Reformed type. We will discuss some of Plantinga’s views further in the next two chapters, while giving more attention to presuppositionalism.

Dooyeweerd’s philosophy is essentially a highly sophisticated development of Kuyper’s position. Of the twentieth-century thinkers profiled here, he was closest to Kuyper both culturally and philosophically.

Clark combined the primacy of deductive logic, characteristic of the classical model, with a radical view of the Bible as furnishing the premises from which logic can derive conclusions qualifying as knowledge. The result is an unusually rationalistic form of Reformed apologetics.

Van Til is by far the most controversial of the major Reformed apologists of the twentieth century. He combined the apologetic tradition of Old Princeton (which drew from both classical and evidentialist approaches) with the anti-apologetic theology of Kuyper. He used the concept of a transcendental argument, which was at the heart of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy, but employed it as an overtly apologetic argument. The result is a theory of apologetics that has been both highly influential and severely disputed. In the next two chapters we will give special attention to understanding Van Til in our analysis of the Reformed approach to apologetics.

For Further Study

Clark, Kelly James. Return to Reason: A Critique of Enlightenment Evidentialism and a Defense of Reason and Belief in God. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990. Excellent introduction to Plantinga’s approach to apologetics.

Frame, John M. Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought. Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1995. Excellent exposition of Van Til’s thought, including chapters on his controversies with Clark and Dooyeweerd.

1See chapter 2 on Augustine and Anselm. On the importance of Augustine in Reformed apologetics, see Dewey J. Hoitenga, Jr., Faith and Reason from Plato to Plantinga: An Introduction to Reformed Epistemology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 57-142.

19Thomas Reid, An Inquiry into the Human Mind: On the Principles of Common Sense: A Critical Edition, ed. Derek R. Brookes, Edinburgh Edition of Thomas Reid (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 4 (Dedication). The statement is also quoted (from another edition) in Wolterstorff, “Thomas Reid on Rationality,” 44.

22Reid, Essays 1.2, quoted in Wolterstorff, “Thomas Reid on Rationality,” 54-55. Wolterstorff characterizes this line of argument as ad hominem (53-55), but that does not seem to be correct. As Wolterstorff himself recognizes, Reid was arguing not merely that certain skeptics don’t live consistently with their skeptical principles, but that people in general can’t live that way. Given that this is Reid’s point, his argument is not ad hominem.

25Helm comments that Reid’s philosophy was “compatible with, if it does not actually entail,” the “a posteriori apologetic stance . . . best exemplified in the work of Paley and Butler.” Helm, “Thomas Reid, Common Sense and Calvinism,” 80.

31See especially Sydney E. Ahlstrom, “The Scottish Philosophy and American Theology,” Church History 24 (1955): 257-72. On the broader influence of commonsense realism in American culture, see Terence Martin, The Instructed Vision: Scottish Common Sense Philosophy and the Origins of American Fiction, Indiana University Humanities, vol. 48 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961; reprint, New York: Kraus Reprint, 1969).

34On the influence of Dutch Calvinism in America, see James D. Bratt, Dutch Calvinism in Modern America: A History of a Conservative Subculture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984); Richard Mouw, “Dutch Calvinist Philosophical Influences in North America,” Calvin Theological Journal 24 (1989): 93-120. Two articles on Dutch Calvinist philosophy during the past century are Jacob Klapwijk, “Rationality in the Dutch Neo-Calvinist Tradition,” and Albert Wolters, “Dutch Neo-Calvinism: Worldview, Philosophy and Rationality,” in Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, ed. Hart, et. al., 93-111 and 113-31 respectively.

35An accessible introduction to Kuyper’s thought is his Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1931), originally the Stone Lectures at Princeton University in 1898. A recent collection of readings from Kuyper is Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998). See further Louis Praamsma, Let Christ Be King: Reflections on the Life and Times of Abraham Kuyper (Jordan Station, Ont.: Paideia Press, 1985); R. D. Henderson, “How Abraham Kuyper Became a Kuyperian,” Christian Scholar’s Review 22 (1992): 22-35 (an excellent introduction); Wayne A. Kobes, “Sphere Sovereignty and the University: Theological Foundations of Abraham Kuyper’s View of the University and Its Role in Society” (Ph.D. diss., Florida State University, 1993); James D. Bratt, “In the Shadow of Mt. Kuyper: A Survey of the Field,” Calvin Theological Journal 31 (1996): 51-66 (one of several articles on Kuyper in the same issue); Peter S. Heslam, Creating a Christian Worldview: Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, U.K.: Eerdmans; Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1998); James E. McGoldrick, God’s Renaissance Man: Abraham Kuyper (Darlington, U.K., and Webster, N.Y.: Evangelical Press, 2000). For a discussion of Kuyper’s views on apologetics, see Ramm, Varieties of Christian Apologetics, 179-95.

36Abraham Kuyper, Principles of Sacred Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968). (Parenthetical page references in the text are to this work.) This book is a reprint of Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology: Its Principles, trans. Hendrik De Vries, introduction by B. B. Warfield (New York: Scribner, 1898).

37Kuyper’s principle work on common grace, De Gemeene Gratie, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1931, 1932), has not yet been translated into English. Helpful overviews of this work and of Kuyper’s doctrine of common grace include S. U. Zuidema, “Common Grace and Christian Action in Abraham Kuyper,” in Communication and Confrontation: A Philosophical Appraisal and Critique of Modern Society and Contemporary Thought (Toronto: Wedge, 1972); Jacob Klapwijk, “Antithesis and Common Grace,” in Bringing into Captivity Every Thought: Capita Selecta in the History of Christian Evaluations of Non-Christian Philosophy, ed. Jacob Klapwijk, Sander Griffioen, and Gerben Groenewoud, Christian Studies Today (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1991), 169-90; Kobes, “Sphere Sovereignty and the University” (1993), 122-49.

44See William Young, Toward a Reformed Philosophy: The Development of a Protestant Philosophy in Dutch Calvinistic Thought since the Time of Abraham Kuyper (Grand Rapids: Piet Hein, 1952).

45Dooyeweerd is notoriously difficult to understand, especially for those not familiar with Dutch thought. Standard introductions to his thought include J. M. Spier, An Introduction to Christian Philosophy (Nutley, N.J.: Craig Press, 1970); L. Kalbeek, Contours of a Christian Philosophy: An Introduction to Herman Dooyeweerd’s Thought, ed. Bernard Zylstra and Josina Zylstra (Toronto: Wedge, 1975); Samuel T. Wolfe, A Key to Dooyeweerd (Nutley, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1978). A difficult but important study of Dooyeweerd is Vincent Brümmer, Transcendental Criticism and Christian Philosophy: A Presentation and Evaluation of Herman Dooyeweerd’s “Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea” (Franeker: T. Wever, 1961). Edwin Mellen Press (of Lewiston, N.Y.) is publishing in many volumes The Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd.

46Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, trans. David H. Freeman, William S. Young, and H. De Jongste, 4 vols. (Nutley, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1953-1957; bound as two volumes, 1969). All parenthetical references in the following paragraphs are to this work, with the volume number preceding the colon and the page reference following it.

47Two of the best editions of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in English are the translations by J. M. D. Meiklejohn in Great Books of the Western World, vol. 42 (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952), 1-250, and the translation by Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965).

51The only book-length biography of Van Til is William White, Van Til: Defender of the Faith (Nashville:Thomas Nelson, 1979), an entirely uncritical work by a close friend of Van Til. For more recent treatments with some perspective, see John M. Frame, Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1995), 19-37; Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1998), 7-20. These two books are by far the most important works on Van Til. An earlier, helpful work developing Van Til’s apologetic is Thom Notaro, Van Til and the Use of Evidence (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1980).

52On Machen’s relation to Van Til, see Greg L. Bahnsen, “Machen, Van Til, and the Apologetical Tradition of the OPC,” in Pressing Toward the Mark: Essays Commemorating Fifty Years of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, ed. Charles G. Dennison and Richard C. Gamble (Philadelphia: Committee for the Historian of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 1986), 259-94. Bahnsen makes a good case for understanding Machen to be more in agreement with Van Til’s approach than critics of Van Til might suppose. For an equally interesting counterpoint emphasizing Machen’s agreement with Old Princeton, see Paul Kjoss Helseth, “J. Gresham Machen and ‘True Science’: Machen’s Apologetical Continuity with Old Princeton’s Right Use of Reason,” Premise 5, 1 (1998), found online 10/27/2005 at < http://homepage.mac.com/shanerosenthal/reformationink/pkhmachen.htm >. That article is a longer version of Paul Kjoss Helseth, “The Apologetical Tradition of the OPC: A Reconsideration,” Westminster Theological Journal 60 (1998): 109-29.

53A complete collection of Van Til’s writings is available on CD-ROM, The Works of Cornelius Van Til, 1895-1987 (New York: Labels Army Company, 1995), along with a printed guide by Eric D. Bristley, A Guide to the Writings of Cornelius Van Til, 1895-1987 (Chicago: Olive Tree Communications, 1995).

54Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic, already mentioned, and Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith, ed. Robert R. Booth (Atlanta: American Vision; Texarkana, Ark.: Covenant Media Foundation, 1996). The first is a massive tome presenting extensive readings from Van Til’s writings (especially Defense of the Faith, A Christian Theory of Knowledge, Introduction to Systematic Theology, and Survey of Christian Epistemology, but more than a dozen others as well) with Bahnsen’s detailed and insightful analysis and footnotes. The second is a more popular exposition of presuppositionalism that focuses on biblical and practical support for the method. See also Steven M. Schlissel, ed., The Standard Bearer: A Festschrift for Greg L. Bahnsen (Nacogdoches, Texas: Covenant Media Press, 2002).

55John M. Frame, Doctrine of the Knowledge of God: A Theology of Lordship (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1987), is an involved analysis of the foundations of theology from a Van Tilian perspective. Apologetics to the Glory of God: An Introduction (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1994) is a well-written primer on apologetics. Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought, already mentioned, presents a well-rounded introduction to Van Til’s life and thought. See also Frame, “Presuppositional Apologetics,” in Five Views on Apologetics, ed. Cowan, 208-231.

56On Carnell, see Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 3rd ed. (Nutley, N.J. and Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1967), 227-33, 242-48. Citations from Defense of the Faith are from this third edition except where otherwise noted. On Schaeffer, see Van Til, “The Apologetic Methodology of Francis Schaeffer” (Philadelphia: Westminster Theological Seminary, n.d. [1974]), mimeographed paper. William Edgar has argued that while Van Til and Schaeffer did have some substantive differences, the two were closer than perhaps Van Til himself realized; see Edgar, “Two Christian Warriors: Cornelius Van Til and Francis A. Schaeffer Compared,” Westminster Theological Journal 57 (1995): 57-80.

66Henry’s own autobiography is Confessions of a Theologian (Waco, Tex.: Word, 1986). Overviews of Henry’s life and thought are found in Bob E. Patterson, Carl F. H. Henry, Makers of the Modern Theological Mind (Waco, Tex.: Word, 1983); Richard A. Purdy, “Carl F. H. Henry,” in Handbook of Evangelical Theologians, ed. Elwell, 260-75. Purdy’s dissertation on Henry is an important study: “Carl Henry and Contemporary Apologetics: An Assessment of the Rational Apologetic Methodology of Carl F. H. Henry in the Context of the Current Impasse between Reformed and Evangelical Apologetics” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1980). See also Steven Mark Hutchens, “Knowing and Being in the Context of the Fundamentalist Dilemma: A Comparative Study of the Thought of Karl Barth and Carl F. H. Henry” (Th.D. diss., Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, 1989).

71There is some question whether Clark’s treatment of biblical inspiration as the axiom for all knowledge was a novel development in his thought. See Ronald H. Nash, “Gordon Clark’s Theory of Knowledge,” in Philosophy of Gordon H. Clark, ed. Nash, chapter 5, and Mary M. Crumpacker, “Clark’s Axiom: Something New?” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 32 (1989): 355-65.

81Plantinga, “A Christian Life Partly Lived,” 51-52; parenthetical references in the next few paragraphs are to this work.

82Alvin Plantinga, “Christian Philosophy at the End of the Twentieth Century,” in The Analytic Theist: An Alvin Plantinga Reader, ed. James F. Sennett (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 346. Thus, the claim that Plantinga “strongly rejects” the idea of an “antithesis between believers and unbelievers” (Steven B. Cowan, review of Faith Has Its Reasons [1st ed.], in Philosophia Christi 6 [2004]: 372) is mistaken.

83Plantinga, “Self-Profile,” in Alvin Plantinga, ed. Tomberlin and Van Inwagen, 21; parenthetical references in the next several paragraphs are to this work.

92Steven B. Cowan, in his review of the first edition of Faith Has Its Reasons, faulted its authors’ placing of presuppositionalists and Reformed epistemologists in “the same camp” as “the most obvious error in their classification system” (Philosophia Christi 6 [2004]: 372). Cowan registered this complaint despite agreeing with us on specific points of comparison between the two (e.g., “the view that belief in God is properly basic”) and despite the fact that we pointed out some of the very differences between the two varieties that Cowan mentioned (e.g., some Reformed epistemologists are less critical of natural theology than presuppositionalists; Plantinga supports a form of the free-will defense against the problem of evil, unlike presuppositionalists). More generally, Cowan’s criticism mistakenly treats the four basic types as if they were uniform systems rather than broad categories of approaches to apologetics.

14. Reformed Apologetics: Christianity in Conflict

One of Cornelius Van Til’s many unpublished syllabi was an overview of the history of Christian apologetics entitled Christianity in Conflict.1 The title aptly characterizes Van Til’s view of apologetics in two ways. First, he saw apologetics as properly confronting unbelief in non-Christian thought. In this sense it stands at the point of conflict between Christianity and non-Christian religions and philosophies. But second, he argued that there was an internal conflict within Christianity over the method and approach to be used in apologetics. This conflict was and is between defending Christianity by the improper approach of accommodating it to the unbelieving presuppositions of non-Christian thought and defending it by the proper approach of challenging those unbelieving presuppositions. This twofold note of conflict is characteristic of the Reformed approach to apologetics, especially as practiced by Van Til, Clark, and their disciples.

Biblical Standard for Defining Truth

Fundamental to classical apologetics and evidentialism are their respective approaches to epistemology, or the theory of knowledge. Putting the matter rather broadly, classical apologetics is indebted largely to the rationalist tradition in Western philosophy, while evidentialism is indebted to the empiricist tradition. Now this characterization immediately requires qualification. Few if any classical apologists have been pure rationalists, and few (though some) evidentialists have been thoroughgoing empiricists. Nearly all apologists of both approaches today would favor some epistemology that combined elements of rationalism and empiricism and avoided the extremes of both theories.

Reformed apologists, on the other hand, believe a different approach to epistemology is in order. They typically reject not only rationalism and empiricism but also any epistemology that seeks to combine the two theories, as all these epistemologies in their different ways treat human knowledge as self-sufficient or autonomous. That is, rationalism, empiricism, and other such epistemologies attempt to explain how human beings can gain knowledge without reference to God and man’s relationship to God. According to Van Til, there are ultimately only two kinds of epistemologies: those that make all human knowledge dependent on God and those that do not. “In the last analysis we shall have to choose between two theories of knowledge. According to one theory God is the final court of appeal; according to the other theory man is the final court of appeal.”2

Reformed apologists argue that when classical and evidentialist apologists seek to use a method that non-Christians can accept, they are actually seeking a method that assumes man’s self-sufficiency to arrive at truth (since only a method based on that assumption would be acceptable to non-Christians). Van Til, for example, insists that the Christian should use a distinctive method of knowledge in keeping with his distinctive understanding of God as the source of all knowledge: “The question of method is not a neutral something. Our presupposition of God as the absolute, self-conscious Being, who is the source of all finite being and knowledge, makes it imperative that we distinguish the Christian theistic method from all non-Christian methods.”3

Most Reformed apologists do not reject deductive and inductive reasoning as such. However, they typically do reject deductive and inductive apologetic arguments. For Van Til, a deductive apologetic argument would require agreement between the Christian and the non-Christian on the premises, and such agreement does not exist. Moreover, the use of reason is not the same for the two kinds of people. The appeal to reason in apologetics as traditionally carried out is therefore problematic, as Van Til explains: “‘Reason’ in the case of the non-Christian is employed by such as assume themselves to be self-sufficient, while ‘reason’ in the case of the Christian is employed by those who through regeneration have learned to think of themselves as creatures of God and of their task of life as keeping covenant with God.”4

While Clark and Van Til disagree on the proper use of deductive logic in apologetics, both flatly reject inductive apologetic arguments because they conclude in probability rather than certainty. Van Til writes, “It is an insult to the living God to say that his revelation of himself so lacks in clarity that man, himself through and through a revelation of God, does justice by it when he says that God probably exists.”5

Reformed apologists also warn against defending Christianity on the basis of an epistemology that does not provide a proper ground for deduction and induction. The proper ground cannot itself be epistemological, since one cannot ground an epistemology on an epistemology, but must be a metaphysic—a view of reality, or what is also known as a worldview. Thus Reformed apologists insist that apologetics ultimately involves a conflict between Christian and non-Christian worldviews. As Greg Bahnsen puts it, “every apologetic encounter is ultimately a conflict of worldviews or fundamental perspectives (whether this is explicitly mentioned or not).”6

Both Dooyeweerd and Van Til argue the necessity of employing transcendental reasoning to establish the ground of knowledge and meaning. As we saw in our profile of Dooyeweerd, a transcendental argument seeks to know what the conditions are that make knowledge possible; it seeks to give an account for what makes both deductive and inductive reasoning intelligible or meaningful in the first place. Unlike deductive and inductive reasoning, a transcendental argument does not begin from specific truth claims (premises or data) that must themselves be established before any conclusion can be drawn. Rather, it gives an account of what the necessary conditions must be for any truth claim, or even the negation of that truth claim, to be at all intelligible.7 According to Van Til, only a transcendental argument can validly be used to prove the reality of God: “Now the only argument for an absolute God that holds water is a transcendental argument. A deductive argument as such leads only from one spot in the universe to another spot in the universe. So also an inductive argument as such can never lead beyond the universe. In either case there is no more than an infinite regression.”8

Van Til also spoke of this transcendental argument as “reasoning by presupposition”:

To argue by presupposition is to indicate what are the epistemological and metaphysical principles that underlie and control one’s method. . . . The method of reasoning by presupposition may be said to be indirect rather than direct. The issue between believers and non-believers in Christian theism cannot be settled by a direct appeal to “facts” or “laws” whose nature and significance is already agreed upon by both parties to the debate. The question is rather as to what is the final reference-point required to make the “facts” and “laws” intelligible.9

Putting the question this way may seem to assume that non-Christians will agree on the need to have some consistent, intelligible view of facts and laws. As John Frame recognizes, not everyone actually agrees or even seems to care: “So the choice is this: either accept the God of the Bible or deny objective morality, objective truth, the rationality of man, and the rational knowability of the universe. Some might maintain that they don’t care much about this. They might say that they can go on living happily enough without having a rational basis for thinking and acting.”10

Elsewhere Frame observes that in contemporary thought a burgeoning movement called postmodernism self-consciously argues that there is no single rational basis for thinking and acting. Here is how he describes the movement:

Every several years, one hears the claim that contemporary thought has become radically different from anything that has gone before. The latest claim of this sort is made for “postmodernism.” We are told that thirty years ago or so, our culture rejected the rationalistic assumptions of the Enlightenment and came to recognize that “linear, scientific, objective” thinking is largely an expression of bias. Therefore, contemporary postmodern thought rejects all the assurances of the past and opens itself up to various non-Western, nonlinear influences, such as Eastern religions, occultism, and so on. It “deconstructs” language to lay bare its essential use—not as a means of rational communication from one mind to another, but as a means of social power, to control and oppress.11

Contemporary Reformed apologists like Frame agree with their classical and evidentialist counterparts that postmodernism is an unacceptable and irrational approach to knowledge. Unfortunately, from the Reformed perspective, traditional apologists tend to assume a modernist philosophy as the stance from which to refute postmodernism. That is, classical apologists treat postmodernism as the abandonment of the belief in absolute truth for the belief in the relativity of all beliefs—as if modernism were somehow preferable to postmodernism. Evidentialists criticize postmodernism on the grounds that it flies in the face of the facts—as if facts had meaning apart from the philosophical framework in which they are viewed.

Frame proposes that postmodernism be viewed in terms of Van Til’s analysis of the history of non-Christian thought as the working out of a kind of dialectic between a rationalistic impulse and an irrationalistic impulse. If Van Til were alive today, Frame comments, “he would say that the ‘new thinking’ of our time is really nothing drastically different from what has been going on since the Garden of Eden. Essentially, it is rationalism and irrationalism.”12

The rationalistic impulse is an expression of the desire by fallen human beings to subject all of reality, including God, to rational inspection and evaluation. Rationalism, in this broad sense, is the error of treating the human mind as capable in principle of determining what is true and what is right. It is the sin of seeking “the knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:17; cf. 3:5, 22) as a knowledge measured by the human mind. The irrationalistic impulse expresses the desire by fallen human beings to be free of any final, determinative standard of truth and value. In this sense irrationalism is the error of denying that there is an objective, transcendent Origin determining for us what is true and what is right. It is the sin of seeking to “be like God” (Genesis 3:5), to be gods unto ourselves. According to Van Til, both impulses are constantly present to some extent in unbelieving thought:

It was thus that man, in rejecting the covenantal requirement of God became at one and the same time both irrationalist and rationalist. These two are not, except formally, contradictory of one another. They rather imply one another. Man had to be both to be either. . . . In ancient philosophy the rationalistic motif seemed to dominate the scene; in modern times the irrationalist motif seems to be largely in control. But the one never lives altogether independently of the other.13

Frame applies this analysis of the history of unbelieving thought to the contemporary movement of postmodernism:

The latest contemporary ideas are essentially no different from those of the ancient Greeks, the modern rationalists and empiricists, Kant, Hegel, and the others. Postmodernism, insofar as it is really a change from what has gone before, is a shift from a rationalist to an irrationalist impulse. Its rejection of “linear objectivity” is something we have seen before, among the Greek Sophists, in Hume’s critique of objectivity, in Kant’s critique of metaphysics, and in Hegel’s attempt to achieve truth through negation and synthesis.14

Frame suggests two lines of criticism that the apologist can fruitfully present when confronted with a non-Christian who claims not to care whether his life has a rational basis or who adheres to postmodernism or any other irrationalist philosophy. First, the apologist can point out that the irrationalist’s attitude or profession is inconsistent with the way he normally lives. Second, the apologist can tell the irrationalist that in his heart he knows better:

But if someone has resolved to live without logic, without reason, and without standards, we cannot prevent him. He will, of course, accept logic and rationality when he makes his real-life decisions, and so he will not live according to his theoretical irrationalism. In many apologetic situations, it is useful to point this out. But for a tough-minded irrationalist, logical inconsistency is not a problem. Still, at some level he knows he is wrong. God still speaks, around and in the unbeliever.15

The Vindication of Reformed Theology

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Presbyterian and Reformed churches struggled over encroaching modernism. A breach developed between those who defended historic Calvinism and those who moved in the direction of theological liberalism. But within the conservative Calvinistic camp, another rift developed over the way the Calvinistic position should be defended. While the “Old Princeton” school, including B. B. Warfield and Charles Hodge, advocated a classical approach to Christian apologetics, Dutch Calvinists such as Abraham Kuyper argued that such an approach was inconsistent with Reformed theology’s Augustinian and Calvinistic roots. This is the heart of R. J. Rushdoony’s later criticism of the Old Princeton apologetic method. “To believe that man can reason his way to the faith constitutes a form of Arminianism; it is an affirmation that the natural man can receive the things of the Spirit of God, and that he can know them (I Corinthians 2:14). To attempt to reason man into faith, or to appeal to a rationalistic apologetics is thus to set up reason rather than God as ultimate, because it asks the sinful and fallen reason of the natural man to assess and judge God.”16

Similarly, Cornelius Van Til argues that Calvinistic theologians who follow the traditional method of apologetics derived from Arminian theologians (especially Butler) have allowed their apologetic to lag behind their theology.17 He agrees with Warfield’s theological position, especially on the inspiration of Scripture, but takes issue with his appeal to the reason of natural man because of its inconsistency with the implications of Reformed theology.18 In the same way, he criticizes Hodge’s use of the traditional method of apologetics and endorsement of reason as a means of evaluating a revelation.19 Van Til instead follows Kuyper by beginning with the Christian theistic position rather than reasoning “to the full theistic position from a standpoint outside of it.”20 He contends that a choice must be made: a person can either use reason to stand in judgment of the credibility of the Christian revelation, or he can renounce his perception of himself as ultimate. Arminian apologetics follows the former course; Reformed apologetics takes the latter.

Van Til insists that it is “logically quite impossible for the natural man, holding as he does to the idea of autonomy, even to consider the ‘evidence’ for the Scripture as the final and absolutely authoritative revelation of the God of Christianity.”21 Apart from the Reformed faith, theology and philosophy “lead ultimately to a universe where chance is placed above God.”22 In short, Van Til maintains that the traditional method of apologetics compromises the biblical doctrines of God, revelation, man’s creation in the image of God, and sin.23 The fact that this method has been employed for so long by Reformed theologians has “stood in the way of the development of a distinctly Reformed apologetic.”24

Toward a Christian Philosophy

Reformed apologists of all the kinds surveyed in the previous chapter call for Christians to develop a Christian philosophy that is based on its own principles and is faithful to the Christian revelation. Alvin Plantinga, the most renowned Reformed philosopher of this century, and representative of what we called the “left wing” of the Reformed apologetic tradition, will serve as our example here. In his paper “Advice to Christian Philosophers,” he urges Christian philosophers to be more independent of the academic philosophy establishment, to display more integrity or wholeness in their work, and to be bolder in affirming their Christian perspective.25 He points out that “the Christian community has its own questions, its own concerns, its own topics for investigation, its own agenda, and its own research program” (298). He also warns that Christian philosophers need to avoid becoming so enamored of contemporary philosophers that they fall into the trap of trying to express Christian concepts using alien ideas. He uses the philosopher Willard van Orman Quine as an example:

Quine is a marvelously gifted philosopher; a subtle, original, and powerful philosophical force. But his fundamental commitments, his fundamental projects and concerns, are wholly different from those of the Christian community—wholly different and, indeed, antithetical to them. And the result of attempting to graft Christian thought onto his basic view of the world will be at best an unintegral pastiche; at worst it will seriously compromise, or distort, or trivialize the claims of Christian theism. (299)

Plantinga encourages Christians engaged in philosophical work to be unabashed in expressing a distinctively Christian point of view. “And—and this is crucially important—the Christian philosopher has a perfect right to the point of view and pre-philosophical assumptions he brings to philosophic work; the fact that these are not widely shared outside the Christian or theistic community is interesting but fundamentally irrelevant” (299).

According to Plantinga, a Christian philosopher who stands resolutely on his principles will respond to philosophical challenges to Christianity differently than one who wants to accommodate Christianity to philosophy. Plantinga uses verificationism, the logical positivist movement, as an example. Many Christian philosophers and theologians, faced with the challenge of the verifiability criterion of meaning (according to which theological statements are meaningless), took the challenge far too seriously. All too often they tried to accommodate Christian theology to verificationism.

What they should have said to the positivists is: “Your criterion is mistaken: for such statements as ‘God loves us’ and ‘God created the heavens and the earth’ are clearly meaningful; so if they aren’t verifiable in your sense, then it is false that all and only statements verifiable in that sense are meaningful.” What was needed here was less accommodation to current fashion and more Christian self-confidence: Christian theism is true; if Christian theism is true, then the verifiability criterion is false; so the verifiability criterion is false. (301)

Plantinga illustrates his point again with the problem of evil. Against those who press the reality of evil as evidence weighing against belief in God’s existence, he replies that in ordinary reasoning such evidence is weighed along with the rest of what the person considering this evidence already believes and knows to be true. He then suggests that the Christian has every right to include the belief that God exists as a basic part of that body of truth that is already believed and possessed—in which case the reality of evil will not undermine the person’s confidence that God exists.

Perhaps the theist has a right to start from belief in God, taking that proposition to be one of the ones probability with respect to which determines the rational propriety of other beliefs he holds. But if so, then the Christian philosopher is entirely within his rights in starting from belief in God to his philosophizing. He has a right to take the existence of God for granted and go on from there in his philosophical work—just as other philosophers take for granted the existence of the past, say, or of other persons, or the basic claims of contemporary physics. (303-304)

If a Christian is asked what justifies his belief that God exists, one possible answer is that given by Augustine and developed by Calvin. God, Plantinga says, “has developed in humankind a tendency or nisus or disposition to believe in him,” a disposition that remains universally present despite its suppression by sin (304, 305). “No doubt this suggestion won’t convince the skeptic; taken as an attempt to convince the skeptic it is circular” (305). But that should not inhibit the theist from affirming this answer, since a Christian philosophy rightly takes its foundational principles as basic and builds on them.

But this means that the Christian philosophical community need not devote all of its efforts to attempting to refute opposing claims and/or to arguing for its own claims, in each case from premises accepted by the bulk of the philosophical community at large. It ought to do this, indeed, but it ought to do more. For if it only does this, it will neglect a pressing philosophical task: systematizing, deepening, clarifying Christian thought on these topics. (312)

Much of what Plantinga says here will resonate with more conservative Reformed apologists. One key difference, though, is that he concludes that Christian philosophers ought to be prepared to argue their position based on premises acceptable to non-Christian philosophers, while not treating such arguments as primary or necessary justification for their position. For Van Til, on the other hand, as for most conservative Reformed apologists, it is impossible to find any premises acceptable to non-Christians from which the Christian position can be validly defended. Whereas Plantinga argues for the rational respectability of theism, especially Christian theism, Van Til argues for the rational inescapability of Christian theism (and only specifically Christian theism). “We as Christians alone have a position that is philosophically defensible.”26

Van Til’s view of philosophy may also be helpfully compared with that of Herman Dooyeweerd. Both of them agreed that the only true philosophy would emanate from what Dooyeweerd calls “a radical Christian starting-point.” However, Dooyeweerd argues “that this Christian philosophy does not derive its fundamentals from theology in its scientific sense, and, therefore, should be sharply distinguished from the latter.”27 In the end this means that Christian philosophy does not derive its fundamentals from a study of the Bible. Dooyeweerd does encourage Christians to believe that philosophical thought can “be ruled by the central motive of Holy Scripture.” However, this central or “spiritual basic motive is elevated above all theological controversies and is not in need of biblical exegesis, since its radical meaning is exclusively explained by the Holy Spirit operating in our opened hearts, in the communion of this Spirit.”28

Van Til, on the other hand, argues against any hard-and-fast distinction between philosophy and theology. “Philosophy deals with no concepts that theology does not deal with. It is but a matter of terminology.”29 Both philosophy and theology are concerned with the subjects of being (metaphysics), knowledge (epistemology), and morality (ethics); they simply deal with them in different language. Moreover, the Christian philosopher, no less than the theologian or anyone else, must base his intellectual work, his arguments and conclusions, on the Bible. This does not mean, Van Til cautions, that philosophy is subordinate to theology; rather, both are subject to the Bible. The philosopher may, however, turn to the theologian for help in understanding the Bible, since that is the theologian’s area of specialization. “The philosopher is directly subject to the Bible and must in the last analysis rest upon his own interpretation of the Word. But he may accept the help of those who are more constantly and more exclusively engaged in biblical study than he himself can be.”30

Christianity against False Science

Both classical and evidentialist apologetics tend to accept the methods of modern science as basically valid and its findings as generally correct. The former tends to be more cautious in endorsing scientific theories than the latter, but both agree that Christianity can be shown to be consistent with science. Reformed apologetics calls this traditional assumption into question on the grounds that the nature, methods, and findings of science will in principle be different when practiced by non-Christians than when practiced by Christians. While Christianity is in agreement with the facts, non-Christians naturally view the facts in a way that is biased against the Christian faith.

The basic lines of this view of science were laid down by Abraham Kuyper in his Principles of Sacred Theology.31 As we noted in the previous chapter, at the heart of Kuyper’s teaching is the idea that regeneration, or palingenesis, effectively divides the human race into two kinds of people, the regenerate and the unregenerate. These two kinds of people “face the cosmos from different points of view, and are impelled by different impulses,” resulting in “two kinds of science.” The assumption of the absolute unity of science, therefore, “implies the denial of the fact of palingenesis, and therefore from principle leads to the rejection of the Christian religion” (154). Kuyper hastens to explain that “truth is one,” and from that standpoint “science also can only be one” (155). What he means is that the regenerate and the unregenerate are building “two different structures, each of which purposes to be a complete building of science,” yet they necessarily differ from one another because of their differing viewpoints on the world (156). Both edifices cannot be true; one must be regarded as ultimately false to the reality it seeks to reproduce.

Kuyper also emphasizes that the difference between the two sciences does not prevent overlap and even cooperation in some matters.

First, because there is a very broad realm of investigation in which the difference between the two groups exerts no influence. For in the present dispensation palingenesis works no change in the senses, nor in the plastic conception of visible things. The entire domain of the more primary observation, which limits itself to weights, measures and numbers, is common to both. . . . Whether a thing weighs two milligrams or three, can be absolutely ascertained by every one that can weigh. (157)

It would, however, be a mistake to conclude that science is the same for both groups. Kuyper points out that measures and numbers constitute only the “first and lowest part” of science, representing “the foot of the ladder of scientific investigation” (157). As one moves up that ladder into the interpretation of such measures and numbers, one quickly begins to deal with matters where one’s worldview affects one’s interpretation. Thus it is really useless for a Christian to try to persuade a non-Christian that Christianity is scientifically true. The worldview of non-Christians dictates that they practice science and view the facts studied by science in a way that really assumes that Christianity is false. Kuyper concludes that traditional apologetics is misguided in its efforts to convince non-Christians that Christianity is scientifically credible:

No polemics between these two kinds of science, on details which do not concern the statement of an objectively observable fact, or the somatic side of the psychical sciences, or, finally, a logical fault in argumentation, can ever serve any purpose. This is the reason why, as soon as it has allowed itself to be inveigled into details, and has undertaken to deal with things that are not palpable phenomena or logical mistakes, Apologetics has always failed to reach results, and has weakened rather than strengthens the reasoner. (160)

Kuyper’s position, in sum, is that the usual characterization that modern discoveries and theories have resulted in a conflict between religion and science, or between faith and science, is mistaken. “Not faith and science therefore, but two scientific systems or if you choose, two scientific elaborations, are opposed to each other, each having its own faith.”32

Van Til’s most extensive treatment of science appears in his book Christian-Theistic Evidences, in which he begins by defining such evidences as “the defense of Christian theism against any attack that may be made upon it by ‘science.’” He takes “the word science in its current meaning,” including both “the results of science, both real and imaginary,” and “the methodology of science.” The thesis of Van Til’s book is “that it is only upon Christian presuppositions that we can have a sound scientific methodology.” It is because science typically proceeds on the basis of assumptions or presuppositions that are inimical to the Christian faith that it reaches conclusions that are at variance with the teachings of the Bible. “The chief major battle between Christianity and modern science is not about a large number of individual facts, but about the principles that control science in its work. The battle today is largely that of the philosophy of science.”33

For Van Til, the fundamental premise of a true philosophy of science must be the biblical view of the world as created and providentially ruled by God. “Scripture teaches that every fact in the universe exists and operates by virtue of the plan of God. There are no brute facts for God.” Modern science, on the other hand, “takes for granted the ultimacy of brute facts.”34 By “brute facts” he means the idea that facts are random bits of information that are not necessarily related in any fixed or given way and may therefore be known by the human interpreter apart from an interpretive context.35 They are not to be confused with objective facts, the existence of which Van Til affirms.36 The idea of brute facts presupposes that facts are random occurrences in a universe operating according to chance rather than the determined plan and purpose of God. Thus modern science is principially committed to the presupposition that the God spoken of in Scripture (particularly as understood in Reformed theology) does not exist.

Not surprisingly, then, Van Til concludes, “It is fatal to try to prove the existence of God by the ‘scientific method’ and by the ‘appeal to facts’ if . . . the scientific method itself is based upon a presupposition which excludes God.”37 Rather than trying to prove God by science, the apologist should argue that the validity of science depends on God. Science seeks to discover the coherence, unity, and uniformity in nature. But the assumption that there is uniformity in nature is at odds with viewing nature as a mass of brute facts waiting for the scientist to correlate and interpret them as he sees fit. The uniformity of nature presupposes a transcendent origin of nature in the singular mind of God, who created the world and made the facts of nature what they are according to his design.

Our argument as over against this would be that the existence of the God of Christian theism and the conception of his counsel as controlling all things in the universe is the only presupposition which can account for the uniformity of nature which the scientist needs. But the best and only possible proof for the existence of such a God is that his existence is required for the uniformity of nature and for the coherence of all things in the world.38

Thus Christian apologists or scientists should not entertain as valid possibilities scientific theories that exclude God and debate such theories on a factual level, as if the matter were open to interpretation. Instead, they should insist that any theory that is inconsistent with the necessary presupposition of all scientific theory, the existence of the sovereign God, is self-defeating and irrelevant.

Over against this contention that theoretically any hypothesis is as relevant as any other, we place the Christian position which says that no hypotheses which exclude the necessary existence of the triune God of Scripture can be relevant to any group of facts. There is only one absolutely true explanation of every fact and of every group of facts in the universe. God has this absolutely true explanation of every fact. Accordingly, the various hypotheses that are to be relevant to the explanation of phenomena must be consistent with this fundamental presupposition.39

For example, Van Til argues that the theory of evolution should be rejected as irrelevant: “If one offers the hypothesis of biological evolution as the explanation of man’s appearance on the earth, we reply that the hypothesis is irrelevant. Our further study of the factual material is no more than a corroboration of our assertion of the irrelevancy of this hypothesis.” He makes clear that while the “factual material” can and should be studied, the Christian should conduct such study on the assumption that any and all facts must confirm what we know from Scripture is the true interpretation of the facts. “We appeal to facts, but never to brute facts. We appeal to God-interpreted facts.”40

We should not overlook the importance of Van Til’s teaching on science for creationism. One of the founders of contemporary creationism was John C. Whitcomb, Jr., whose book The Genesis Flood, co-authored with Henry M. Morris, is really the primary text of the movement. More specifically, this book is commonly regarded as marking the beginning of the contemporary scientific creationist movement that defends a young earth, a global Flood, and geologic catastrophism in defense of a literal interpretation of Genesis.41 Whitcomb based his view of the relationship between science and Scripture on a form of Van Til’s apologetic system.42 Like Van Til, Whitcomb and other young-earth creationists emphasize the impossibility of scientific theories without religious presuppositions. They argue that both creationism and evolutionism should be seen as essentially religious in character, an assessment that is characteristic not only of Van Til but of the entire Kuyperian tradition. Like Van Til, young-earth creationists affirm the priority of biblical teaching to scientific investigation. In their view the Bible speaks both more authoritatively and more clearly about such questions as the age of the universe than science should or can. Young-earth creationists also understand the radical effects of the Fall on human thought to extend to affect science in a substantial way.

Van Til himself appears to have been broadly supportive of the creationist movement, although his treatment of creation did not focus on such questions as the age of the universe.43 He did criticize Philo for his view that “the Mosaic account of the origin of the world and of the days of creation must not be taken as historical but allegorical.”44

We should also note the highly controversial view of science advocated by Gordon Clark. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Clark rejected inductive argument as fallacious when used as a means of knowing truth, favoring instead an exclusive use of deductive logic working from premises known to be true. True to this epistemology, in his book The Philosophy of Science and Belief in God Clark reviews the history of science in order to show that science does not and cannot arrive at truth. This is not to say that Clark thinks we cannot ascertain facts about the physical world; rather, there is a sense in which science cannot explain any of the facts it describes. “Does science explain anything? . . . Surely we want to know more than the path of the planets and the acceleration of a freely falling body. Facts such as these are interesting and important. But a statement of fact is not an explanation: It is the very thing that needs to be explained. Viewed in this light, science explains nothing.”45

Worse still, according to Clark, science’s descriptions of nature in the form of laws or mathematical formulas are not descriptions of the way things actually are in the real world. Rather, they are mathematical idealizations. For example, the law of the pendulum, which “states that the period of the swing is proportional to the square root of the length,” assumes a perfect pendulum in a perfect environment (57). “Only an ideal pendulum, an imaginary pendulum, only a non-existing pendulum is described by the Newtonian law” (58). And this is true for all such scientific laws describing physical processes in mathematical form. Clark does not mince words: “Therefore, all the laws of physics are false” (60).

Science depends heavily on the use of inductive argument. So much the worse for science, according to Clark. Recall that his form of presuppositionalism regards the Bible’s truth as axiomatic and assumes the validity of deductive reasoning as a means of drawing inferences from the Bible. This emphasis on deduction carries through to his view of science. The argument form implicit in all claims of verification of scientific laws through experimentation, according to Clark, is the following.46

If hypothesis H is true, then experiment E will produce the results R.

Experiment E does produce the results R.

Therefore, hypothesis H is true.

Clark comments, “Obviously, this argument is the fallacy of asserting the consequent; and since all verification must commit this fallacy, it follows that no law or hypothesis can ever be logically demonstrated” (71). This fallacy is a mistake in deductive reasoning of the following form:

If A, then B.

B.

Therefore, A.

In logic the A is called the antecedent and the B the consequent. The fallacy of affirming the consequent is the mistake of thinking that if the consequent is true, the antecedent must be true. To see that this is not so, consider the following example:

If it rained, the driveway will be wet.

The driveway is wet.

Therefore, it rained.

With a moment’s reflection one can easily imagine other circumstances that might have caused the driveway to become wet (for example, someone just washed the car). Arguments of this form, then, are deductively invalid. According to Clark, this is also true of all claims that experiments have verified scientific hypotheses. He concludes “that the violation of logic can be justified only on the ground that scientists are not interested in the literal truth of their laws. . . . What is needed now is not so much a new science, but a new philosophy of science” (72).

On the basis of this line of reasoning, Clark favors a form of the philosophy of science known as operationalism, a version of nonrealism, according to which science does not progress toward a greater and more accurate knowledge of the “real” world. According to operationalism, science consists in descriptions of the operations performed by the scientist and not the actual entities or realities studied or hypothesized. For Clark “the most certain truth of physics is that physics is not true—not true as an account of what nature is and how nature works” (79). “Electrons and light waves are not physically existing things; they are elements of a set of instructions on how to operate in a laboratory” (90).

In Clark’s apologetic, operationalism completely undermines any attempt to use science to disprove creation or any other aspect of Christian doctrine. If science is not a means for gaining knowledge about nature but is instead a method developed “to utilize nature for our needs and wants” (93), then science cannot overturn what we know about God’s activity in the creation of nature. If science is not true, it cannot prove Christianity false. Since science is a discipline that develops protocols for performing operations in a laboratory, its “laws” are not literal descriptions of reality that do not change. Rather, they are conventions that can and are frequently discarded for new ones. “Therefore anti-Christian arguments based on science always depend on premises that will soon be discarded” (102).

For Clark, then, science really is irrelevant to Christian apologetics. Noting that even Einstein acknowledged that science can never enable us to know the real nature of things, Clark concludes: “From this the further conclusion follows that science can never disprove the truth of Christianity. It can never prove or disprove any metaphysical or theological assertion” (109).

Presuppositionalists who follow Van Til instead of Clark generally assume a realist view of science, yet heavily qualify their realism in light of their conviction that non-Christian science fails to interpret the real world properly. In making this distinction two Van Tilians in particular, Vern Poythress and John Frame, have drawn on the work of the nonrealist philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn. In Kuhn’s landmark book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, he argued that science progresses as communities with shared paradigms, or ways of viewing the world, replace their paradigms in sudden revolutions or “paradigm shifts.” These occur under the pressure of internal criticism from within the scientific community as scientific renegades propose rival paradigms to account for information not well integrated into the old paradigm.47 Poythress in particular has found a number of useful and valid insights in Kuhn’s work. The Reformed claim is that there are rival sciences rooted in the different paradigms, or worldviews, of the Christian and non-Christian scientific communities. Poythress also suggests that Christians progress in their understanding of science, and indeed of theology, by considering rival paradigms (for example, alternative theological formulations on controversial doctrinal questions). Both Poythress and Frame, while distancing themselves from Kuhn’s relativistic and outright nonrealistic view of science, consider him useful in helping people understand the critical role that presuppositions play in apologetics.48

Revelation as Interpreting History

The way Reformed apologists view science carries over into how they view history and the use of historical evidences in apologetics. We will speak briefly of the views of Kuyper and Clark, then give Van Til’s more complex position more in-depth attention.

Kuyper had no real use for historical evidences. In his view, apologetic arguments in support of the Christian faith are constrained by the fact that in every single point of contention, the antithesis between the Christian and non-Christian view of knowledge and of the world is ultimately at issue. “Scarcely has a single step been ventured in the way of such a controversy before it is felt on both sides that the acknowledgment of a different opinion on this one point would unsettle one’s entire life- and world-view.” The naturalist, therefore, cannot concede one miracle without forfeiting his position. He will answer the argument from miracles by denying their very possibility; he will answer the argument from prophecy by claiming that all apparent prophecies must have been written after the fact.49

Given Clark’s thoroughgoing rejection of all empirical, inductive arguments as resting on deductive fallacies, one would assume that he rejected all historical arguments supporting the Bible and Christian truth. Actually, though, that would be something of an overstatement. First of all, Clark agreed that evidences have their place; he simply denied that they could serve as positive arguments for the truth of Christianity. “Certainly there is a place for evidences in the propagation of the Christian faith. Certainly the resurrection of Jesus should be preached and the testimony of the eye witnesses recounted. But after we have published abroad His wonderful name, and after we have declared our faith, the auditors may ask us a reason. Apologetics therefore has its place too, but in the temporal order it is a later place.”50

Clark saw only a limited, negative purpose for such argumentation, that of answering objections. Apologetics must go beyond these matters to the underlying, foundational issues:

The Christian reply to a rationalistic rejection of revelation should not concern itself too much with archaeological evidence that the Bible is historically accurate. Spinoza, to be sure, was an early member of the long line of higher critics who delighted to find blunders in the Old Testament. . . . But Spinoza’s argument was that an historical narrative, even if perfectly accurate, is valueless in religion. A Christian reply therefore must be directed against the epistemology that underlies Spinoza’s statement. The important question is not whether or not the Bible is true, but whether or not all knowledge is deducible by reason, i.e., by logic alone.51

For Clark, historical argument cannot prove Christianity true; at best it can answer arguments purporting to show that it is false. Clark denies that one can logically reason from the fact of the Resurrection (assuming a non-Christian can be persuaded to agree to that fact) to the truth of the Christian belief about Jesus.

Suppose Jesus did rise from the grave. This only proves that his body resumed its activities for a while after his crucifixion; it does not prove that he died for our sins or that he was the Son of God. While this line of anti-Christian argument contains certain misstatements, none the less the inference in the last sentence is valid. The resurrection, viewed purely as an isolated historical event, does not prove that Christ died for our sins, not only because Lazarus also rose from the dead, but also because sin is a notion which requires a particular view of God and the universe, and on such questions archeology and history are incompetent.52

Van Til’s position is more complex, and there has been much controversy about its actual import. On the one hand, his critics routinely complain that his method negates any value for historical evidences and arguments in apologetics, and they can cite a number of passages from his writings that would seem to support their contention. On the other hand, his defenders insist that he had a positive place for historical argument and evidences in his apologetic. They too cite supportive passages from his writings.

The most often cited such passage appears in The Defense of the Faith. In it Van Til quotes at length from an article in which he responded to criticisms of his apologetic by J. Oliver Buswell, Jr., a well-known evidentialist. Van Til explains how his approach differs from the traditional one. (a) He says he takes the Bible as absolutely authoritative and bases his apologetic, and indeed his whole philosophy of life, on its teachings. (b) He argues that God’s revelation of himself both in nature and in Scripture is objectively clear, so that people are utterly without excuse for their failure to believe in God. This leads him to reject any kind of apologetic that stops short of that conclusion. In particular, he objects to formulating theistic arguments in such a way that they conclude that God probably exists. (c) He does not deny that fallen human beings can reason or understand truth. What he does deny is that their reason and understanding can be intelligible apart from the creation of human beings in God’s image. He therefore objects to an apologetic that seeks neutral ground between Christians and non-Christians.53 The fourth and final way Van Til’s apologetic differs from the traditional is:

(d) Implied in the previous points is the fact that I do not artificially separate induction from deduction, or reasoning about the facts of nature from reasoning in an a priori analytical fashion about the nature of human-consciousness. I do not artificially abstract or separate them from one another. On the contrary I see induction and analytical reasoning as part of one process of interpretation. I would therefore engage in historical apologetics. (I do not personally do a great deal of this because my colleagues in the other departments of the Seminary in which I teach are doing it better than I could do it.) Every bit of historical investigation, whether it be in the directly Biblical field, archaeology, or in general history, is bound to confirm the truth of the claims of the Christian position. But I would not talk endlessly about facts and more facts without ever challenging the non-believer’s philosophy of fact. A really fruitful historical apologetic argues that every fact is and must be such as proves the truth of the Christian position.54

While this frequently quoted statement must, of course, be given full weight in interpreting Van Til, it must be read in light of everything else that he says about evidences and apologetics. The last sentence is key: historical apologetics should argue that every fact must prove Christianity. And how, for Van Til, is this to be done? Van Til leaves no doubt. Christian evidences must show that apart from Christ’s interpretation of man in Scripture, man’s speech is meaningless.55 Non-Christian interpretations of the facts or evidences are not to be refuted primarily by a study of the facts but by dismissing them as irrelevant. “For the non-Christian any sort of hypothesis may, at the outset of an investigation, be as relevant as any other. . . . But for one who holds that the facts are already part of an ultimately rational system by virtue of the plan of God it is clear that such hypotheses as presuppose the non-existence of such a plan must, even from the outset of his investigation, be considered irrelevant.”56

Recall that this is how Van Til asserted that scientific hypotheses should also be treated. Study of the facts can at best corroborate the Christian position; proof is to be found in the transcendental or presuppositional argument that unless Christianity is true there are no intelligible facts to be studied in the first place. He illustrates this point with the Resurrection: “God’s self-existence is the presupposition of the relevancy of any hypothesis. If one should seek to explain the claim of the disciples of Jesus that their Master’s body was raised from the tomb by offering the hypothesis of hallucination, we reply that the hypothesis is irrelevant. Our further study of the factual evidence in the matter is no more than a corroboration of our assertion of the irrelevancy of such an hypothesis.”57

Van Til flatly disallows any attempt to reason apologetically by a direct appeal to the facts,58 because the non-Christian can always toss the facts “in the bottomless pit of pure possibility.” For example, he can allow that the Resurrection took place as merely an unusual event, while rejecting the Christian understanding of that event as God’s miraculous vindication of his Son. “You see that the unbeliever who does not work on the presupposition of creation and providence is perfectly consistent with himself when he sees nothing to challenge his unbelief even in the fact of the resurrection of Christ.”59

The basic difference between the approaches to historical evidences of presuppositionalists on the one hand and classical and evidentialist apologists on the other hand is that the former reason transcendentally about the facts while the latter reason inductively about them. Consequently, presuppositionalists claim that their apologetic argument yields absolute certainty for their knowledge of the historical facts of the Bible, whereas traditional apologetic arguments yield only probability. Presuppositionalists, in fact, consistently criticize apologetic arguments that conclude that this or that biblical event or claim is “probably” true. To the criticism that historical investigation by its very nature cannot rise above probability in its findings, Greg Bahnsen makes the following telling reply:

This kind of criticism [against probabilistic arguments] is often answered by saying that historical facts (especially miraculous ones), just because they are such, cannot be known with any more than a high degree of probability. Such an opinion is contrary to God’s inspired word, however. Peter proclaimed this historical event (and miracle): “Let all the house of Israel therefore know with certainty that God has made him Lord” by raising Jesus from the dead (Acts 2:24, 36). He did not say that it was highly probable that Christ rose from the dead, but rather that it was “not possible” that death could hold him (v. 24).60

Bahnsen’s defense of the presuppositionalist rejection of probabilistic apologetic arguments makes it clear that his approach to historical evidences does not proceed inductively. That is, we do not “know with certainty” that God raised Jesus from the dead because we have studied the historical evidence inductively. We know it with certainty because if we were to deny it, we would implicitly be denying the Christian theistic revelation, apart from which we have no coherent basis for knowing anything in history.

We may summarize the distinctive approach taken by Reformed apologetics to historical evidences by comparing it with the two approaches already covered. Evidentialists argue that one can make a case for God’s action in history by examining the evidence for those events using critical historical methods that do not assume that God exists. Classical apologists disagree; they maintain that one must first establish theism as true and, on that basis, examine the evidence for God’s actions in history. Reformed apologists take the classical objection to evidentialism one step further: not only is it necessary to establish the truth of theism in order to see God’s actions in history for what they are, it is necessary to establish the truth of Christian theism. But this is really the same as saying that the historical evidence cannot be the basis of any kind of empirical apologetic argument for the truth of Christianity. At most the historical evidence can be adduced as confirmation within the perspective of a full-orbed Christian worldview.

In short, Reformed apologists argue that we cannot use history to prove theism (as in evidentialism) or even to prove revelation to those who accept theism (as in classical apologetics). Rather, we must use revelation to prove theism and the true meaning of history.

The Problem with Experience

Classical apologists appeal to the pervasiveness of religion and religious experiences (of all kinds) throughout human history and in all cultures to show that human beings have an incorrigible need to relate to a source of transcendence. This argument aims at proving that some kind of God must exist. Evidentialists commonly take a different approach in view of the fact that vastly different religions claim rather similar religious experiences. For them Christianity is unique because it offers objective, verifiable evidence for its religious claims, which are then known with certainty through the experience of Christian faith. They therefore invite non-Christians to examine the evidence for Christianity in order to see that there are objective grounds for “trying” Christianity experientially.

Reformed apologists take yet another approach to the relation of experience to apologetics, basic to which is the Reformed understanding of the “total depravity” of unredeemed humanity. According to the Reformed doctrine, unredeemed human beings are still in God’s image, and yet that image is thoroughly darkened by sin. Non-Christian religion, in this view, in some way bears witness to the reality of God’s image in man, yet at the same time is a completely unreliable source of knowledge about God. The only way human beings can come to know God truly is to experience the illuminating effects of regeneration by the Holy Spirit through faith in Christ.

On the basis of this understanding of the creation and fall of mankind, most Reformed apologists avoid basing apologetic arguments on religious experiences in general. But neither do they appeal to the experience of regeneration as the basis of an apologetic argument. Rather, they typically contend that the rational faculties of Christians are enabled through regeneration to recognize and believe the truth about God. In other words, the experience of regeneration is the cause, not the ground, of Christian belief.

According to Reformed apologists, the condition of the unregenerate mind precludes finding common ground with the unregenerate in shared beliefs or principles of thinking. This is because the unregenerate mind is committed in principle to thinking about everything in such a way as to avoid acknowledging their spiritual darkness and need for redemption in Christ. However, Reformed apologists do acknowledge another kind of common ground, or what is often called a point of contact, between Christians and non-Christians: the image of God that is in both of them. Because all people are still in God’s image, they have within them, albeit suppressed by sin, an awareness of God to which appeal may and should be made in apologetics.

Both Clark and Van Til share this understanding of the point of contact. We quote first from Clark’s defense of apologetics in his critique of Karl Barth’s theological method: “But Reformed theology, while denying a common epistemological ground, has always asserted a common psychological or ontological ground. Believer and unbeliever alike, though their philosophic axioms and theorems are totally incompatible, bear in their persons the image of God from creation.”

By “a common epistemological ground” Clark means the idea of non-Christians and Christians sharing the same approach to knowledge. For Clark the only sound approach to knowledge is to accept the Word of God in Scripture as absolute truth. The “common psychological or ontological ground” is the image of God that exists in both Christian and non-Christian. The mind and being of the unregenerate is still created in God’s image. As a result, non-Christians still know and think some truth. Thus, Clark continues: “This image consists of or at least includes their ordinary rational ability as human beings and as an exercise of this rationality certain minimal theological and moral principles. These beliefs, dimly and inconsistently held, often submerged and repressed, can be thought of as a point of contact for the Gospel.”

Although believers and unbelievers do not agree on the axiomatic starting point for knowledge of the truth, unbelievers do recognize some truth because they still bear God’s image. Clark speaks of this recognized truth as “beliefs, dimly and inconsistently held, often submerged and repressed.” That is to say, non-Christians do in some fashion believe some truth about God, but they may not be aware of it and may on the surface appear to believe something quite different. These beliefs, despite these difficulties, may be used in apologetics as the point of contact:

Apart from the supernatural agency of the Holy Spirit, these beliefs could never develop into a belief in the Gospel nor even into a knowledge of the Gospel. But in the series of psychological experiences, with all the many and great differences from individual to individual, these elementary beliefs can be used by the Holy Spirit to produce an acceptance of the message preached. Thus there is no inconsistency in denying a common axiom while asserting a common psychological or ontological “ground” or “point of contact.”61

Turning to Van Til, we find at first much the same understanding of the point of contact. “Disagreeing with the natural man’s interpretation of himself as the ultimate reference-point, the Reformed apologist must seek his point of contact with the natural man in that which is beneath the threshold of his working consciousness, in the sense of deity which he seeks to suppress.”62

For Van Til, as for Clark, the sense of deity (Calvin’s sensus divinitatis) is a function of the image of God that is present in both the unregenerate and the regenerate. Like Clark, he contends that the truth about God is still present in the unregenerate, though “beneath the threshold of his working consciousness,” due to its suppression in sin. However, he does not apply the image of God as the point of contact in the same way as Clark: “And to do this the Reformed apologist must also seek a point of contact with the systems constructed by the natural man. But this point of contact must be in the nature of a head-on collision. If there is no head-on collision with the systems of the natural man there will be no point of contact with the sense of deity in the natural man.”63

Thus, for Van Til the point of contact is not one of agreement with what the unbeliever thinks, but of disagreement, for the position the unbeliever professes and thinks is at odds with what he knows in his heart. “All men, even after the fall, know, deep down in their hearts, that they are creatures of God; that they should therefore obey, but that they actually have broken, the law of God.” But because they are in rebellion against God, “all men seek to suppress this truth, fixed in their being, about themselves.”64 The result is that, outwardly, non-Christians refuse to believe in the true God, while inwardly, at the core of their being, they really know that he is God and are unable to escape this knowledge entirely. “Psychologically there are no atheistic men; epistemologically every sinner is atheistic.”65 According to Van Til, an apologetic argument can appeal to this point of contact by reasoning in a transcendental argument that unless man is made in the image of God, nothing in our experience makes sense. “A truly transcendental argument takes any fact of experience which it wishes to investigate, and tries to determine what the presuppositions of such a fact must be, in order to make it what it is.”66

Reformed apologists, then, like Clark and Van Til, do not appeal to specific experiences to validate or provide evidence for theism or Christianity. Rather, they appeal to the universal experience or condition of humanity as both created in God’s image and fallen in sin. They argue that confronting the unbeliever with the truth about his created and sinful condition is a necessary part of presenting the gospel of redemption from sin. They then look to the work of the Holy Spirit in regenerating those God has chosen to redeem as the experience by which the unbeliever will be able to recognize the truth about his fallen condition and gratefully repent of his epistemological rebellion. As Van Til explains, the Reformed apologist recognizes that apologetic argument will not convert or regenerate anyone, but at the same time he engages in apologetics in the expectation that God will use it as part of the experience leading to regeneration. “The miracle of regeneration has to occur somewhere, and all that we are arguing is that we must ask where it is that the Holy Spirit will most likely perform this miracle. And then there can be no doubt but that the likelihood is in favor of that place where the non-theist has to some extent seen the emptiness and vanity of his own position.”67

For Further Study

Clark, Gordon H. A Christian View of Men and Things: An Introduction to Philosophy. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952; reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981. One of Clark’s most respected works, presenting his approach to history, science, religion, epistemology, and other areas of thought.

19Van Til, Defense of the Faith, 80-89; foreword to Jim S. Halsey, For a Time Such as This: An Introduction to the Reformed Apologetic of Cornelius Van Til (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1978), ix.

41John C. Whitcomb, Jr., and Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Flood (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1961). For a discussion (by an advocate) of the importance of this book to the movement, see Charles A. Clough, “Biblical Presuppositions and Historical Geology: A Case Study,” Journal of Christian Reconstruction 1, no. 1 (summer 1974): 35-48. This periodical is the work of Christian Reconstructionists, a Calvinist movement emphasizing the ethical, social, and political applications of Van Til’s philosophy.

42For his advocacy of Van Til’s apologetic system, see John C. Whitcomb, Jr., “Contemporary Apologetics and the Christian Faith,” Bibliotheca Sacra 134 (1977): 99-106, 195-202, 291-98; 135 (1978): 24-33. Some indication of Whitcomb’s adherence to a philosophy of science akin to that of Van Til can be seen in the introduction to The Genesis Flood (see especially xxi).

60Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic, 644 n. 197. We may note here in passing that Acts 2:24 has nothing to do with historical argument or even how the Jews were supposed to know that Christ was risen. Peter is simply saying that because Jesus was the Lord of life, it was impossible for him to stay dead.

15. Taking Every Thought Captive

Reformed apologetics is an approach to defending the faith that differs significantly from traditional apologetics. Nevertheless, Reformed apologists do seek to provide a reasoned defense of the gospel. The apostle Paul described his ministry as “destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and . . . taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). Reformed apologists commonly understand their ministry as continuing Paul’s mandate. They staunchly oppose the idea of neutrality in any area of thought, insisting that Jesus Christ is Lord over science, philosophy, theology, and apologetics. The title of John Frame’s book Apologetics to the Glory of God nicely captures the spirit of Reformed apologetics.

The distinctive theological and philosophical assumptions of Reformed apologetics lead its advocates to equally distinctive approaches to such issues as the existence of God and the problem of evil. In general, Reformed apologetics, especially as articulated by such conservative apologists as Gordon Clark and Cornelius Van Til, may be fairly characterized as offensive. The term is susceptible of two senses here, and actually both apply. Objectively, Reformed apologetics seeks to take the initiative and show that unbelieving thought is irrational, not merely that faith is plausible or reasonable. In this sense “offensive” contrasts with a “defensive” approach to apologetics. Van Til was not shy about using martial metaphors to express this approach (as Paul also did in speaking of “taking every thought captive”). For example, Van Til could write:

Apologetics, like systematics, is valuable to the precise extent that it presses the truth upon the attention of the natural man. The natural man must be blasted out of his hideouts, his caves, his lurking places. Neither Roman Catholic nor Arminian methodologies have the flame-throwers with which to reach him. In the all-out war between the Christian and the natural man as he appears in modern garb it is only the atomic energy of a truly Reformed methodology that will explode the last Festung [fortress] to which the Roman Catholic and the Arminian always permit him to retreat and to dwell in safety.1

Subjectively, Reformed apologists warn that the gospel will be personally offensive to non-Christians. Apart from the enlightenment of regeneration, unbelievers take offense at the message that they are spiritually dead, at enmity with a holy